


Fellow Exiles

by HermitLibrary_Archivist



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 43
Words: 188,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24983647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HermitLibrary_Archivist/pseuds/HermitLibrary_Archivist
Summary: Fellow Exiles is a gen Blake's 7 novel written by Harriet Bazley that focuses on the character of Cally. Cally tries to help recover a consignment of stolen medical supplies and gets caught up in something far more complicated.It is an adventure set at the start of the second season, between the episodes "Redemption" and "Shadow", and is basically a full-length extra episode.
Comments: 25
Kudos: 6





	1. Part 1: Amery, Chapter 1: A Night on the Town

**Author's Note:**

> Harriet contacted Judith Proctor in June 2020 asking for this text to be made available. 
> 
> It was originally published in 2003 by Waveney.
> 
> https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fellow_Exiles

Cally and Gan would not have been Jenna’s own first choice as companions for a night out on the town; particularly when the town in question was Blackport, notorious throughout Federation space for the variety of its colourful — not to say off-colour — entertainments, an open rendezvous for half the smugglers in this Sector, and favoured as a holiday destination by Gamma and Beta grades in most of the surrounding systems. She glanced around the crowded room and mentally added to the list of the port’s charms its attraction to Alpha grades with a fancied taste for slumming. Planetside in Blackport, if you kept out of the dock areas, you could get the thrill of the rough stuff without the real danger of Space City or New Vegas, rub shoulders with inferior grades, and pose as a hard case, secure in the knowledge that your personal apartment and guaranteed salaried post were awaiting your return to real life. Take that balding man at the centre table, patches of colour chasing and ebbing across his face as the girl on his lap tossed her head and the coloured lights woven into her elaborately-dressed hair flickered; he was an obvious Alpha, a mark for every pickpocket in the room. But no harm would come to him in this part of Blackport, save for the almost certain loss of his credits, if he were fool enough to carry cash....

It was nominally a Federation port. But the planetary authorities were famous for turning a blind eye both to the legality of the business their visitors chose to transact there and to the ‘wanted’ status of their customers. In a Sector this far inside Federation space, it was a policy that guaranteed the planet a giant’s share in the custom of the various illegal operators for thousands of millions of spacials all around — and a healthy share of their considerable cashflow. The Federation, notoriously pragmatic where money was concerned, chose to accept a large proportion of the resulting profits and ask no questions. Basic law and order were enforced on the planet’s surface. Activities off-planet — provided you were reasonably discreet about them — were strictly your own business.

All in all, it was the perfect planet for the _Liberator_ ’s crew to take some well-earned leisure — and cheerful, vulgar Blackport was the perfect town for a rebel pilot with a chequered past and money to burn, who just wanted to have a good time. Good times, of the sort that Jenna had in mind, had been all too thin on the ground over the past year and a half with Blake... it was just a pity that she had to take Gan and Cally along. But given the alternative on offer — trying to keep an eye on both Avon and Vila — she’d assented to Blake’s choice of companions for her with the best grace she could muster.

In fact, Jenna realised with slight surprise, thinking back over the evening, the other two hadn’t been bad company at all. She and Gan had both thoroughly enjoyed the cabaret at the second bar they’d visited, and even Cally had been smiling — although Jenna wasn’t sure just how much of the word-play the Auron had actually understood. She’d been the perfect partner in the arcade, though, the two of them taking on all-comers in game after game of skill and reaction, until the owner had taken objection to the volume of Gan’s enthusiastic partisanship — or, rather more probably, to the amount of money the two women had been winning — and thrown the lot of them out. Now they were on their fifth bar of the night, and it had got to that stage when all the bars were starting to look alike. Low ceilings, coloured light panels in the false-plastic walls, round or square or daringly curved tables, moulded cushioned benches, cup-chairs or simply counters and stools — it was all blending into one cheerful satisfactory haze.

She wiped beads of sweat from her upper lip. With so many close-packed bodies, not to speak of the energy the dancers on the tiny stage were currently putting into their act, it was certainly hot in here. Gan had discarded his cape over the back of his chair and was calmly leaning back watching the stage with his shirt open to the waist; and for a moment Jenna seriously considered doing the same. There were at least half a dozen other women — not to mention the dancers — who were wearing far less, and she would hardly be flouting the dress code. On the other hand... Jenna was not given to false modesty... she probably would attract quite a bit of unwanted attention. She sighed. Perhaps Cally’s dull silk tunic had, after all, been a better choice for bar-crawling than the flamboyant and heavily gold-embroidered gown — ‘heavy’ beginning to seem the operative word here — that she herself had chosen.

A rather envious glance across the table found the other woman, as she’d expected, still cool and dark in her neat dusky-red silks, staring into the depths of the unspeakable confection in her glass with a secretive Cally-smile touching the corners of her mouth. That drink really did look revolting... Jenna averted suddenly queasy eyes, swallowing. Ever since an unfortunate challenge which had taken place while the alien woman was still new (and, in Jenna’s case at least, fairly unwelcome) on board the _Liberator_ , when Cally had demonstrated an unsuspected ability to drink most of the crew, including Vila, under the table without any apparent side-effects at all, due to a certain quirk of the Auron metabolism, Cally had generally avoided alcohol. As she had explained to a dumbfounded Vila, the very fact that alcohol had no effect on her made drinking it fairly pointless from her point of view.

Tonight, however, in what Jenna suspected was a deliberate spirit of mischief, she had made a point of ordering the most bizarre cocktail possible at each bar they visited and nursing the resulting concoction with every sign of enjoying the reactions of neighbouring drinkers, before casually tossing off the remains of the glass as they got up to leave. At the start of the evening Jenna too had enjoyed the game, but after sinking a fair number of drinks herself she was beginning to find the current contents of Cally’s glass distinctly off-putting.

She nudged Gan — whose eyes, in company with those of most of the rest of the clientèle, had wandered from the repetitive gyrations on the stage to the more rewarding scene taking place at the centre table between the somewhat drunken Alpha and the girl he’d hired for the evening, who was obviously intent on giving her enthusiastic employer his full money’s-worth. Jenna spared the couple a glance — she’d seen it all before — then nudged the big man again.

“What’s the next act?” She indicated the stage with a jerk of her head. “Is it worth staying for?” Surreptitiously she wiped more sweat from her face.

Gan leaned over to examine the display on the wall-screen opposite. “‘Mister Marvello and his Incredible Acts of Illusion’,” he read, and raised an eyebrow. “Pity Vila isn’t here to see that. What do you think he’s up to by now?”

“Nothing, I hope,” Jenna answered tartly, “what with both Avon and Blake keeping an eye on him. With luck he’ll have drunk himself safely to sleep before he gets into any trouble this time....”

“I don’t think I’d care to be policed by that terrible pair,” Gan said with feeling. “What sort of a night out do you suppose they’re having?”

Jenna snorted. “A profitable one, I should imagine, with Avon around. Though given the outrageous prices here, even Avon might find that tricky.... How do you feel about the prospect of Mister Marvello?”

“I don’t think this lot are in a mood to appreciate him.” The crowd were starting to get rowdy. “Shall we move on? — Cally, what is it?”

Almost at the same moment, Jenna too had caught Cally’s sudden sharp movement from the corner of her eye. Instinctively she glanced around for a pickpocket or even an amorous pincher passing behind them; but she’d chosen this corner table with some care when they arrived. They had a good view of both the stage and the door, and at their backs there was only the vertical corrugation of the pseudo-wood wall cladding. No-one could take them by surprise.

Cally was looking more puzzled than anything else. She raised tentative fingers to her temples, looking around the room. “I thought I heard something.... Ah, that hurts!” Her fingers were splayed at the side of closed eyes as she winced.

Gan put a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Cally, what is it?”

Cally’s eyes were open again, but she didn’t seem to be seeing either her two companions or the room around her. Her gaze was focused on a spot only a short way in front of her, and it was full of fear. One hand came up as if to fend off the empty air. “No — please, no —”

“Cally —” Gan caught hold of the other shoulder and pulled her round to face him as her eyes closed and her face contorted. “Something’s trying to get at her mind!” he mouthed in an undertone to Jenna, who grimaced and nodded. She was sorry for the Auron, of course, whatever she was going through was obviously both unwelcome and agonising — but if it put the rest of them in danger as it had before, now of all times, she couldn’t help wishing that there was some way to shut off Cally’s telepathy, that seemed to make her so vulnerable.

Gan gently prised away the hand that was still clamped to her skull as if trying to shut out from the telepathic part of her mind whatever she was experiencing. “Cally, shall I call Blake? Do we need to get away from this planet? How close is it?”

He didn’t really expect a coherent answer, but Cally’s eyes drifted open and she seemed to recognise him. “I need to go. Now — at once —” She tried to pull free and Gan tightened his grasp, his big hands enveloping her fragile-seeming shoulders.

“Cally, you’re not thinking straight. And Blake specifically told us not to get split up —”

“There is no time —” Cally’s face was desperate.

“We need to know, first — tell me, Cally —” Jenna leaned across Gan, trying to catch the other woman’s eyes, but even as she did so the Auron’s face went blank and wild again, and she slipped, silver-quick, from beneath Gan’s grasp and darted into the crowd. He made a grab for her but missed, his reactions dulled by alcohol while hers, of course, were unimpaired. Jenna pulled herself out from behind the table in an instinctive attempt at pursuit, but even as she reached her feet she knew it was useless. Across the crowded room, in a clinging dress, she stood no chance of catching up with Cally; and even as she halted she caught sign of the slim red figure slipping through the doorway and out into the street. She couldn’t even judge whether Cally had turned right or left in the darkness. The pilot sank back down into her seat, cursing quietly and comprehensively.

“Now what?” Gan interrupted patiently, after Jenna’s vocabulary showed no signs of exhaustion.

She stopped, and looked up at him with a scowl. “We get in touch with Blake and try to explain what happened. Of all the times for Cally to get an attack of the screaming heebie-jeebies —”

“I’ll go after her,” Gan put in quickly, before Jenna could get started on a few more choice comments. “She didn’t know what she was doing, you could see that — she could walk into anything out there —”

“No, you don’t... if anything’s using Cally as a lure, the last thing we want is for more people to run headlong into a trap. Blake told us not to split up, and it looks as if he may have known what he was talking about after all —”

“We can’t just leave Cally —”

“We’re not going to leave Cally. We’re going to get Blake to decide what to do. He likes making decisions for us, doesn’t he? Well this is one I’ll gladly hand over — and I swear I’ll wring that alien’s neck when I get hold of her, if Blake doesn’t do it first....”

“I’m going to see if she’ll answer her communicator,” Gan said stubbornly. He switched on the communicator in his own teleport bracelet, the thick band looking like sturdy jewellery as it circled his massive wrist. Jenna let him call repeatedly for a few seconds.

“Gan, she’s not answering,” she pointed out impatiently. “If you’re not going to contact Blake, I will....”

* * *

Desperate, blinding need hammered at Cally, driving her onward, allowing her no time to think, only to respond on the most primitive level to that childish call of pure agony and fear-of-death that instinct permitted no adult within hearing the chance to ignore. Her feet took her down first one darkened street, then another, without any conscious choice or memory on her part, seeking out the most direct route to the source of that terrified sub-rational appeal for help. At one point her communicator chimed against her wrist, once, then again and again, and a battened-down part of her mind knew that she should answer it, that if help were needed it would be better if three came rather than one alone. But the mental call came again, tapping directly into deep-buried instincts from before civilisation, from before the nurseries, and all coherent thought was swept aside as she redoubled what was already a break-neck pace through a maze of streets that miraculously never once led to a dead end.

The pressure on her mind suddenly slackened; and Cally found herself in a small open space where three narrow roads met among the high, domed shapes of half-seen storage chambers, with no very clear idea of how she had reached here, or even, for one terrible moment of vertigo, of why she was in such a place at all.

As memory flooded back, she reached out in panic to trace the source of that summons which had fallen so ominously silent. The other mind was still there, still alive, resonating with pain and fear-of-pain, but for a blessed moment no longer sending out that blinding primal cry. It was not a child after all, she registered with a touch of the ingrained disapproval that was reserved for any adult who abandoned, even in extreme terror, the strict mental discipline that all children on a crowded planet instinctively acquired by the time they could first talk out loud. Young, yes — younger by some planetary years than herself — but no child. As logic could have told her from the first, here on an alien planet with Auron adhering rigidly to its policy of strict neutrality... if she had only been given the chance to think logically. There were ways and ways of calling for help, and anyone of adult projective power who gave way to that particular instinct on Auron would have ended up paralysing the traffic of an entire city — and suffered the relevant civil penalties for anti-social communication, as well as the social ostracism that would result from such an infantile display.

But it was one of her own kind, however impossible that might seem here in her exile among aliens, far from home.... The ache of loneliness which she thought she had learned to control was suddenly sharp within her. She glanced around rapidly to find cover — as far as she could judge, she had found her way down into the area near the spaceport, where only the most foolhardy tourists ever attempted to venture — and settled for the deep shadows under the curved ceramic side of one great storage-pod. She reached out again, trying to judge the distance, and made her presence known to the other mind.

The shade of reproof she tried to infuse into the contact ebbed away in the face of the sheer wave of relief, astonished gratitude and awakening hope that flooded back at her, and the bitter taste of utter loneliness and physical agony that the other was unable totally to control.

//Wait!// she sent urgently, as the surge of directly-received emotion threatened to overwhelm her after so many months, and now years, spent in a purely verbal culture. At the same moment came the guilty memory of Jenna and Gan, abandoned without explanation in a dimly-recalled bar what felt like a lifetime ago, through it had probably been barely ten minutes....

She raised her teleport bracelet cautiously to her lips and operated the communicator. “Jenna, this is Cally —” she began, and winced at the volume of the incredulous reply. She did not wait for Jenna to finish. “I think I must be down in the dock area — I have no real idea of how I got here —” She was not going to explain the details of what had happened over a communicator link to a mind-deaf alien. There were some subjects that needed at least a modicum of privacy....

She flinched as a new wave of pain came over the tenuous link she was still maintaining with the other telepath. The respite that had given her the chance to establish a coherent contact, whatever blessed chance had granted it, was apparently over.

“I have to go, Jenna. There is someone nearby — one of my own people, from Auron — who needs my help urgently.... Yes, I too wish that you had come with me, but it is too late now.... I will tell you later — I shall be back soon —”

She let the communicator click off, grudging the time spent even on those few brief sentences. //Where are you?// she sent to the other through the fog of pain that was, mercifully, with the knowledge of her presence, no longer blinding them both with panic. //Show me.//

She opened her mind further, offering the deeper link that she would never normally have used with a total stranger, and after a fractional hesitation, felt it accepted. Cally sent a splinter of her mind across briefly into his — for the first time she knew the younger telepath to be male — seeking to hear what he heard, see what he saw, sense what he could feel. She caught a glimpse of a dark alley between high buildings, a group of men, greedy and vicious in their disappointment, all broader and stronger than the boy through whose eyes she saw them, then a brief view of a haze of crude-coloured light across the mouth of the alley. Linked to that came an image, blurred by memory, of a street lit only by the garish reflections from the illuminated bar-fronts, and the alley-mouth, seeming in retrospect to gape vast and black with terror, down which he had been forced....

Of more immediate value was the clear sense of direction, and of distance, which she immediately gained from the deeper link. There was also pain, but much less than it had seemed when relayed through the perceptions of the other... she drew on her combat experience to show him: //Here, the pain is nothing; this is how you block it — // Then her awareness was gone from his mind, leaving behind only the customary trace of gratitude for the loan of his senses, and the grim knowledge of her rage at what had been done to him.

Cally rose swiftly from her crouch in the shadows, slipping her _Liberator_ hand-gun free from the belt holding the square power-pack that charged it. For the first time she was glad that Blackport’s rough reputation had led Blake to insist that they all go down visibly armed. She spared a single quick glance down each of her three possible exit routes, then without hesitation chose a fourth, a narrow, railed walkway that clung spider-like to the side of the great curved mass of wall above her. She sprang, clung for a second, then rolled neatly under the lower rail and to her feet. The smear of neon light glimpsed up ahead only confirmed what direction-sense had already shown her — this was the quickest route to the place she sought.... She broke into her deceptively slow-striding hunting-lope, gun-hand held low and by her side, her set face purged of all emotion.

//I’m coming,// she sent simply.

* * *

“I will tell you later — I shall be back soon —” Cally’s transmission broke off with an uncompromising click.

“And just what do you make of that?” Jenna demanded, swinging round and almost colliding with Blake. Vila, who had crowded close in the narrow entrance-hall of the casino in an attempt to catch Cally’s words, stepped back hurriedly.

“Only that it’s a pity you couldn’t stop her,” Blake said calmly. He leaned back against one of the supporting pillars of the porch, crossing his arms.

“Does that mean the search party’s off?” Vila demanded, half-poised to dart back into the gambling rooms. “You don’t want me to go up to the _Liberator_ and trace her using the teleport circuits?”

Gan frowned as Blake failed to respond. “Blake, we are still going after Cally, aren’t we?” His big hands were plaiting creases in the false-velvet drapes that half-hid the alcove into which he had wedged his shoulders.

Blake shrugged. “I don’t think we need to. She said she’d be back soon — and she sounded as if she thought she knew what she was doing.”

“You didn’t see her when she left,” Gan protested. “She was running blind — she didn’t even answer her communicator —”

“Well, she seems to have answered now.” Blake sighed and shifted his shoulders, trying to find a less uncomfortably ornate area on the pilaster to take his weight. “People who go off on their own without letting anyone know what they are planning to do really can’t expect the rest of the crew to drop everything and rush after them....”

Avon’s ironic eyes met Jenna’s across Blake’s oblivious figure. For once, they found themselves totally in accord.

“Gan,” Blake continued hastily, “it was one thing when we thought Cally was in trouble. But she seems to be perfectly all right. If she’s taken off on some private Auron feud, what makes you think she would want us to interfere anyway?”

“Wait a minute —” Vila skipped aside nimbly as a large lady pushed through with a glare for the ill-mannered group who were blocking the only entrance to the casino — “Cally said she wished Jenna had come with her. Even I heard that —”

Jenna moved to stand directly in front of Blake, cutting the thief off in mid-flow. “Why don’t you tell us what’s really on your mind, Blake? I can’t say that I’m any too keen to go chasing down into the docks after Cally — but it’s not like you to argue against an opportunity for pointless heroics. What’s the alternative you’ve got planned?” She caught the involuntary glance back towards the interior of the building, and her lip curled. “Don’t tell me you’ve hit a winning streak on the tables and can’t bear to leave?”

“Winning?” Vila interrupted, irrepressible. “He wasn’t even playing — he went off into a back room with some old fellow in a yellow waistcoat —”

“Shut up, Vila.” Avon came forwards softly out of the draped shadows beside Gan from which he had been watching with his usual scornful calm. “Our noble leader should have picked a more discreet informant. Endal Shemezz — the gentleman with a taste for yellow — will sell anything to anyone; and that includes the names and business of his customers. By now I imagine that anyone in the whole casino who cares to enquire will know that Roj Blake has been consulting Shemezz about current anti-Federation activity in the neighbouring Sectors. And judging by the fanatical gleam in his eye as he began to make his way back across the room towards us just before you called, Jenna, I would hazard a guess that he was about to announce a new crusade involving the _Liberator_ ’s immediate departure from this planet, tonight. Cally’s little escapade would seem to have put paid to that idea.”

His eyes lifted from Jenna to Blake. “I’m sure Blake will correct me if I’m wrong,” he added drily. The only response was a glare.

“Tonight?” Jenna’s voice echoed Vila’s dismayed yelp. “Blake, we agreed three days in Blackport — it’s been two months since we even took on fresh stores —”

“Listen, Jenna, this is more important. We can come back to Blackport afterwards....”

“Assuming we’re not running for our lives as usual at that point,” Avon murmured.

Whatever reply Blake might have been about to make was cut off as the _Liberator_ ’s crew were jostled apart by the irritable passage of another party of gamesters attempting to gain entrance to the casino.

“Blake, we can’t stay here,” Gan said calmly, levering himself out of his alcove. “Is there a place inside where we can talk?”

“There are private rooms available — for a price, of course.” Blake shrugged. “I imagine they’re all heavily bugged, but I think that we have the resources available between us to do something about that....”


	2. Final Solution

On the planet Insecution, in the Fourth Sector, it was late morning. With what the Supreme Commander considered to be a lamentable lack of imagination, the large picture-window in the room which she had temporarily requisitioned from the luxury guest suite assigned to her for use as an office-cum-reception-room had been programmed to show merely ‘realistic’ views of the external scenery. Currently it displayed a view out over the windswept and largely featureless plain that surrounded the capital city with the barest glimpse of the snow-bound mountains beyond. Servalan had discovered from several days’ experience that attempts to obtain a more entertaining view resulted merely in cycling the window through its selection of other local landscapes, each more dreary than the last. She had already more than half-resolved to bring one of her personal technicians down from the command ship that circled in orbit overhead, and insist that he install some of her own favourite backdrops into the antiquated device. Protocol might demand that the Supreme Commander accept the dubious hospitality of this backwater planet during the course of the treaty negotiations; nowhere did it state that she was expected to put up with the view from their windows.

She smiled sweetly at the Deputy-Governor of Insecution, Morrey Batracho, and crossed one knee deliberately and elegantly over the other, luxuriating in the sensation of green silk clinging and sliding free over cool, smooth skin. Judging by expression, Batracho’s imagination was sparing him few of the details. Servalan’s smile broadened an imperceptible fraction, and she leant forward casually, allowing silk to cascade down from her shoulders. She infinitely preferred to conduct these negotiations with male rather than female counterparts; men were so deliciously... malleable. Insecution’s official Governor, Nastasia Inkol, was a shrewd woman who would have held out for the maximum advantage for her planet before signing the treaty that finally brought it within the formal bounds of the Federation. This middle-aged fool needed little encouragement to compound for terms designed to yield him a generous personal profit while greatly increasing the long-term yield of the planet from the point of view of the Federation.

“And how is dear Nastasia?” she enquired solicitously. “I do trust that she will soon have recovered enough to lift some of the burden of government from your doubtless capable shoulders.”

Batracho’s eyes returned, with some reluctance, to her face. “I fear not, Supreme Commander. After all, the accident was most serious — potentially fatal. They tell me the Governor has yet to regain consciousness.”

Servalan lowered sweeping lashes demurely under his gaze. “Such a tragedy — and at the very opening of the treaty negotiations. You must allow me to express my gratitude, Deputy-Governor, for your so gallantly stepping in to take over Nastasia’s rôle at the last minute. My personal schedule is extremely crowded, and it would have been most inconvenient to have been forced to await the Governor’s recovery. Indeed, it might have proved a double tragedy for your planet if Insecution had lost the chance at Federated status due to an urgent need for my presence elsewhere... and so I am sure I speak for the higher echelons of your own people as well as for the High Council when I say that we are all profoundly in your debt. And may I offer you my deepest sympathy for the way in which you have been forced to take up a responsibility which the Governor’s good health must have led you to believe you would be spared for many years yet?”

Servalan leant forward even more intimately, and lifted great dark eyes to judge the effect. With amusement she noted that Batracho actually had tears in his eyes. And if she had ever seen an officer look at his superior with naked envy and ambition, then it had been the Deputy-Governor’s sidelong glances at the grey-haired Nastasia during the welcoming reception when Servalan had first landed....

“But with regret, Deputy- — no, _Acting_ -Governor, I feel we must discuss the remaining outstanding obstacle to Insecution’s becoming a fully-fledged member of the Federation —”

“The rebels.” Batracho scowled. “A handful of vocal malcontents who flout the carefully-considered policies of their lawfully elected government — it’s not as if the Federation never had the same problem on any of its own planets —”

“I must point out, Deputy-Governor, that the so-called rebels on Insecution have been active for nearly twenty years without any notable success in the government’s various operations against them. Moreover, their opposition to government policy and acts of sabotage have been chiefly directed against the conclusion of just such a treaty as we are currently attempting to negotiate. In fact they have been largely responsible for our long delay in offering you the Federation membership so enthusiastically craved by your last three governments, and in that respect their operations may be said to have been highly successful. You must see that it would be... undesirable for the Federation to take on the administration of a planet offering — forgive me — such relatively meagre returns, with such a long tradition of sabotage directed specifically at Federation installations and personnel.”

Batracho attempted to draw himself up indignantly, a task frustrated by the elegant curve of his chair. “Supreme Commander, I can assure you that these rebels, however active, represent the views of only a tiny minority of the people of Insecution —”

“Deputy- — or rather _Acting_ -Governor, in Madam Nastasia’s unfortunate absence —” Servalan allowed her beautiful smile to dawn again — “let us not mince words. We both know that the views of the people of Insecution are of no concern to the Federation. All we require is the support of the current administration, and of that you have already assured us.

“As for the problem of the rebels — am I correct in assuming that the reason why they have evaded justice for so long is that you have been unable to locate their central base?”

“They aren’t using a central base,” Batracho said bitterly. “We made that mistake at first. We knew they were operating out of the Barrier Mountains somewhere, and my predecessor spent most of his career trying to track them back to base. A dozen times he thought he’d cracked it; we sent in heavy troops, weaponry, all the resources we had available to wipe the place off the map. Every single time we found nothing but empty caves and old débris.

“They travel light, Supreme Commander, and we think they operate several bases at once. Every time we get within sniffing-distance they’ve already moved on. The Barrier Mountains are riddled with cave-systems that have never been mapped. Even if we could trace them all, we simply don’t have the resources to monitor the whole mountain range. My predecessor staked his reputation on breaking the rebels, and it broke him. With all due respect, madam —”

Servalan held up one elegant hand. “A most succinct summary, Batracho. My congratulations.” She leaned closer, enjoying his reaction. “And I am sure you will be delighted to know that my tacticians at Space Command have analysed the situation and come up with a final solution.”

“A solution?” Hope and a certain natural resentment warred in his expression. “If there were an easy solution —”

Servalan smiled again. “Oh, not an easy solution, Acting-Governor. Not a solution which would have been available to you at all. As you say, Insecution is still a relatively underdeveloped planet, and your resources are naturally somewhat limited. But when you join the Federation, all that will change. And as a token of the Federation’s goodwill towards your administration, we are prepared to make our superior resources available in order to deal with your little problem once and for all. After all, it sets a bad example to allow rebels to flourish, don’t you think?”

“Supreme Commander — please —” He had half-risen from his seat. “What solution?”

Green silk cascaded softly as Servalan leaned back. “A few months ago, Insecution suffered an epidemic of _lerva_ -plague, I believe?”

Batracho nodded. “A nasty business. We caught the ship that brought it in, but by then it was too late. It’s a viral condition and no known drugs seem to affect it. The victims go through a five-day ‘carrier period’ during which they are contagious but apparently healthy. After the first lesions appear on the mouth and lips, the only chance of survival lies in immediate hospitalisation and intensive care in an attempt to alleviate the individual symptoms, or else death results within three to five days.

“As soon as the scale of the epidemic became clear, we started a mass-vaccination programme. But thousands were already infected. More than a thousand died. The hospitals were full to overflowing — there are still a handful of cases even now who are only just fit enough to leave hospital.”

“But the rebels were unaffected?” the Supreme Commander prompted softly.

Batracho laughed grimly. “ _Lerva_ -plague is contagious, Supreme Commander. It can’t travel across the plains between here and the Barrier Mountains of its own accord. An isolated community like theirs was perfectly placed to ride out the plague without a single casualty. We did catch a couple who got nervous and came in to be vaccinated — we were checking off retina-scans on the population database to make sure we covered as many people as possible, and theirs had been flagged for immediate attention months ago, when they first went missing from the city.

“We keep exhaustive records on population movement here,” he added with satisfaction. “You’ll find us already entirely compliant with Federation requirements in that respect.... But apart from those two, so far as we know the rest of the rebels are still out there, unvaccinated and unaffected by the plague. And as usual, whatever information we managed to get out of the prisoners was completely useless. By the time we got to the caves they’d been using, the rest were already long gone.”

“The key phrase, Batracho, is ‘unvaccinated’.” Servalan inspected immaculate nails with apparently rapt attention. “It so happens that the Federation has been doing work of late on the... possibilities of _lerva_ -plague. Five days ago, with the full permission of the Governor, we carried out our first field-trials on the planetary surface. The viral vector was delivered in droplet-form over a wide area covering the near slopes of the Barrier Mountains. If any of your rebels have contact with the contaminated snow without an environmental suit, or bring any of it back into their base on their clothing... I think we can say that by now the first cases will be just starting to appear.

“There will be panic. There will be recriminations — who broke isolation, who slipped back into the city to make contact with their families or to steal food? There will be rapid contagion. And we shall no longer need to know where their bases are. A tried and tested technique, Acting-Governor, although not with this particular virus. And the beauty of it is that the rest of the population is already vaccinated....”

“Beautiful!” Batracho was on his feet, his eyes sparkling. Before she realised it, he had seized her hand and pressed it to his lips. Servalan controlled an instinctive wince of disgust and smiled graciously upon him. “Supreme Commander, I love it! Let them die up there like flies, like the sewer-scum they are....”

Servalan reclaimed her hand imperiously. “Not at all, Batracho. I fear you misunderstand. The last thing we want in this situation is dead rebels. At all costs we must avoid creating martyrs.” And to that alone you owe your life, Nastasia Inkol. I trust you are grateful. It would have cost my operatives considerably less trouble to have arranged an effectively _fatal_ accident.

She rose to her feet and leaned back against the curved white sweep of the desk behind her, allowing one long sleeve to trail negligently across its surface. “The virus has been specifically re-engineered for this purpose. The first fatalities will not occur for fifteen days. You see, we have developed a cure — an anti-virus.”

She smiled at his expression. “It’s quite simple, Acting-Governor. I want this great discovery publicised as widely as possible on Insecution; make sure it gets spread across all the news-nets. Everyone must know that the first batch is being sent here, to the main hospital in the capital city, where you still have a few plague cases. The outbreak here was the most recent in the Known Worlds — no-one will find it strange. The rebels will be desperate. I think we shall find it easy to ensure that they capture this consignment for their own use... and they will use it. All of them.

“And it will cure them, make no mistake about that. But in order for it to work, they will have to complete the entire course, day after day. Into each dose, we have introduced a significant quantity of a standard Federation pacification drug. It won’t harm them in the least — but it will quench all their fire, all their anti-Federation zeal.

“Without that motivation very few of them will have enough incentive to suffer the hardships of the mountains over the winter. They will come down of their own accord, admitting their own folly, and we shall meet them as they come and extend every clemency to them. They will be discreetly taken for mental re-programming, to ensure they repudiate all their former ideals, and then released back into public life with maximum publicity.

“One reformed rebel is more effective than twenty dead rebels — or so Central Security assure me. And where rebels are concerned, I think we can say that Central Security are the experts.”

“With respect, Supreme Commander... this sounds very much like the strategy that was used to such _notable_ effect on the rebel Blake, on Earth itself.” Batracho’s expression was completely bland, but the venom behind it bit deep.

So you are cleverer than I took you for, little man, ambitious nonentity on a backwater planet that you are....

Blake was nothing. Blake was a political problem, not a military threat. He was a pest to be swatted in an idle moment. His only relevance to the Supreme Commander of the Federation armed forces was the absurd value her political masters placed upon his capture — and the fact that her failure to effect that capture laid her open to jibes from any jumped-up Jack-in-office both inside and outside the Federation.

You’ll pay, Blake. Not for your political activities, for I care no more for politicians than you do. Not for your pitiful attempts at revolution — for the truth is, my dear, one man with one ship is hardly even a great enough irritant to scratch the surface of the Federation. No, you will pay for the personal humiliations that I have had to suffer on your account. I shall take great care to show you just how insignificant you are, how insufferable it is that you dare to threaten my career....

“The notorious _criminal_ Roj Blake was caught, tried a second time, and exiled for life to Cygnus Alpha,” she reminded him coldly. “Unless you know any differently?” And if you admit to doing so, then you stand condemned out of your own mouth as a rebel sympathizer, Batracho.

The Deputy-Governor side-stepped the trap neatly. “Of course, you are far better-placed to know such details than I, Supreme Commander....”

Servalan examined him sidelong through narrowed eyes, sizing him up for the first time not as a potential tool but as a worthy opponent. “You know, I begin to think you and I might do business together,” she murmured.

His mouth twitched slightly under the toothbrush moustache. “We might.” He gave her the archaic Insecution formal salute. “If there is nothing else you require, madam —”

“One thing.” Servalan halted him as he reached the door. “You say you have exhaustive records of your entire population. Does this include known rebels?”

“Naturally.” Batracho drew himself up stiffly. “We have an excellent Intelligence section —”

“Perfect. I wish a suitable-qualified Intelligence officer to be sent to me as soon as possible. See to it.”


	3. The Scent of Home

The alley was very dark, even by comparison with the dimly-lit street; a mere slit between ancient brick-sided buildings. She could see nothing and she would be silhouetted against the entrance. Well, there was no help for it. At least she could sense exactly where the victim was — and, by extension, where at least some of his assailants must be....

There was no more time for hesitation. Cally took cool aim and fired. She flattened herself against the wall just inside the mouth of the alley as her bolt made impact with the side of the building in a searing nimbus of light and a shower of crumbling brickwork. Now they would be as blind as she was.

She fired again almost instantly, aiming by memory for the nearest of that little group revealed in the brief flash of light, counting on a moment’s frozen shock as they realised she was there. In the outcry that followed, she darted further down the alley, catching herself with a hard-slapped palm against the wall as something caught her foot and she stumbled. She used the impetus to send her over to the opposite wall, held her breath for a moment, and fired by ear as a heavy body came stumbling towards the sound of the impact. Two down.

She moved on blindly, let off another shot at point-blank range as someone tried to grab her, missed, twisted free. Then two of them were on her at once, a confusion of struggling bodies in the dark. Cally caught the glint of a knife, struck upwards hard and felt the blade jolt down her left arm and catch at the wrist. Pinned against the wall, she set her teeth, brought up a knee at random to clear a space for herself, and wrenched with all her weight. Something gave.

The teleport bracelet slipped free, releasing her, and rolled underfoot as the group reeled out into the centre of the alley. Cally got her gun up again, squeezing the firing stud and closing her eyes against the flare. A stench of burnt hair and a vicious curse told her of a partial hit. She broke loose as her wounded opponent lost his footing, bringing the other down with him in a crash that brought a further volley of curses and a powdering of brick-dust down on them all. Taking the opportunity to get out of knife-range, she slid back cautiously, her wounded arm shielded against the wall.

Returning night-sight showed her the vague shapes of the two on the ground, and at least two more beyond, hesitating on the verge of coming to their aid. Four against one; even dockyard bullies like these might consider those fair odds.... Time to shorten the odds in her favour. She dropped to one knee in the débris, aiming carefully up the alley, and let off a bracketed pair of shots at head-height, one to the right, one to the left. Angry sounds suggested that she had hit at least one of her opponents.

“I will give you one chance,” she called calmly. “You have twenty seconds to take your weapons and run.”

“How do we know we can trust you?” The inevitable would-be intellectual.

“Do you want to spend your last seventeen seconds deciding?” Cally smiled in the dark as hurried, lurching footsteps receded. She waited twenty more seconds, ears straining to catch the sounds of their retreat, before holstering her gun.

The boy was a hunched shape halfway down the alley, arms locked rigidly over his belly, every muscle shuddering with tension. The white face he raised when she touched him showed dark smears even in the gloom, and as she passed gentle hands across his limbs and body, coaxing him out of the fœtal curl, checking cautiously for broken limbs or internal injury, she found his clothes filthy and torn almost to rags, pitiful remnants of what once must have been a fine holiday outfit. His best planetside clothing, probably; he still wore spacer’s boots.

She persuaded him gently to his feet with support both mental and physical, his arm draped over her shoulder, her mind linked closely with his, offering reassurance and comfort on the most basic, non-verbal levels. A thousand questions teased at her: what happened? and why? how did you get here? who are you? why did you leave Auron? Their minds were linked too intimately for her to be able to hide her need for answers, even if she had wished to do so; but she tried to shield him from the more intense demands of her curiosity with an apologetic screen.

//There will be time for answers later,// she told him gently when he tried to respond. //Rest now, for a moment.// He resisted her, fractionally; then his arms came around her in a fierce clasp, and they clung together in the dark, two telepaths who had been alone too long in an alien world of loud, unsubtle humans.

Cally felt the familiar triple heart-beat, fast and light, echoing her own; caught the scent of home, of her own kind, on him even under the stench of alley-dirt. With a shock she remembered how strange the acrid, almost bitter reek of human skin had seemed when she had first come down on Saurian Major — she had wondered, then, how long she could bear to live in such close contact with them — and, with surprise, how long it had been since she had even noticed. Almost shy, even in the darkness, as she sensed the first traces of wry amusement in the mind of the other, she brought her own wrist up to her face, inhaling the warmth of her own skin, trying to catch that familiar trace in her own scent.

She sent back an indignant response to his dawning laughter, and then yielded to her own sense of the ridiculous. Ripples of silent healing merriment pealed back and forth between them as she felt his mind begin to pull itself together. A personality almost fractured by terror and isolation slipped slowly back into its established pattern, and Cally’s mind was gradually released from its task of supporting and shoring his.

For the first time she had a sense of him as an individual rather than as a victim to be protected. Not a boy after all, but a young man taller than herself, lightly-muscled from soft living, as his mind acknowledged a little ruefully; no match, if it came to it, for her own whipcord toughness. A bright, enquiring mind, despite everything. A young man of passionate, blind enthusiasms and stubborn loyalties.

She let her arms around him slacken, and stepped back, withdrawing gently from the rigid disciplines of the deep link; it was hard to keep two independent minds meshed on that level. But there was a reluctance in them both to separate any further, to retreat to the mental privacy of a purely conversational contact. Cally had suffered total mental privacy for too long, locked into her own isolated self, able to reach out telepathically on a purely verbal level but never to gain any response. The touch of another mind at the back of her own was not an intrusion but a reassurance that she was not alone.

He caught that thought, and she felt horror and a touch of admiration from him: //You have been alone for two _years_?//

She thought back over the time on Saurian Major, the blank emptiness of the last weeks when she had been truly alone; and then the _Liberator_ , and new hope unexpected..... //I left Auron over two standard years ago,// she acknowledged.

Blank incomprehension from the other. //How could you survive — how could anyone last so long?//

//I had friends,// she sent simply. Old pain welled up in her as she remembered those who had taken in a naïve young communications tech on Saurian Major when what they urgently needed was a dozen experienced fighters. Remembered prejudices about aliens overcome on both sides; remembered the hard and often painful lessons she’d had to learn about guerilla warfare, that had forged idealism into steely competence; remembered how their suspicion had ultimately turned to trust and a certain possessive pride. She had been their mascot, by the end; not the youngest of them, no longer even the most naïve, but the one thing they had that no-one else had, the telepath, prized for the edge she gave them over the superior forces they fought. And then they had died, one by one, before her eyes. Under her very hands, while all her hard-won skill was powerless to save them. She offered him the names and faces of her dead as she had given them once, during a sleepless night, to Blake on watch: Pikel, Rina, Liady, Baldrin....

//But they are _human_ — //

At first she was hurt by his shock, then, as the implications of it sank in, filled with appalled comprehension and pity: //You have never had friendship from humans?// She recalled the utter loneliness she had touched in him at first, and shivered.

//There were four of us. Myself, two of my clone-brothers, and a friend, Antris. We had each other,// he told her. She sensed remembered anger in him. //We left Auron last winter — half a standard year ago, now. We couldn’t — wouldn’t — agree with the stupid, short-sighted policy of neutrality towards the Federation. How could we? Time is slipping away. Auron needs to move now, while we can still act on our own terms, use some influence — before we are simply bypassed and absorbed into the Federation almost by default, as one more stagnant backwater planet. We tried to tell them. We tried to change the planetary consensus, four of us to sway the Mind of Auron — //

//You tried, as I tried.// The story was painfully familiar to Cally. //They called you hotheads and troublemakers. And you were exiled, as I was.//

//We would have gone in any case.// Hurt pride speaking, but also stubborn determination. //We wanted to help people, to do something useful. Auron bio-engineering used to be famous across the Known Worlds. We had no trouble in finding a lab that would welcome us. We were used to working together as a small isolated group; we thought we knew what it would be like once we left Auron.//

An image of cold and vast emptiness that, again, was all too familiar. //We had no idea.... There was nothing but a vast engulfing silence all around. The four of us were nothing but a tiny oasis of sanity in a plane where human minds didn’t even register, where there was nothing and no-one else. We turned in upon each other, I suppose — // he sent her a trace of apologetic shame — //we dealt with humans as we needed to, but for companionship we had only each other.//

Cally needed no reminder of the bleak desolation of the empty telepathic plane: she, too had been almost overwhelmed by it in her first days of exile. Then, she had bitterly craved for company; others might have gone with her, if only she had humiliated herself to beg.... She understood now for the first time that the solitude which had forced her to learn to mingle on a human level had perhaps saved her from a worse, and perhaps more dangerous, isolation.

//There _are_ other minds out there,// she warned. //We are not the only telepaths in the galaxy. I was taught that there were once telepathic predators on Auron itself before our ancestors learned to destroy them. And unlike our ancestors, we have no experience in defending ourselves against such an attack; lone wanderers might seem tempting prey to creatures for whom a whole planet of telepaths would be too much threat. If you were not shielding — //

Horror, and cold realisation. //I think that could be what happened to Antris,// he sent painfully. //I thought she had killed herself — it was after the shuttle crash in which my brothers died, and she and Danil had always been very close... but she left no note, and there was no mark on her....//

His memories of that time were only too vivid, and Cally shrank from the spectre she herself had unwittingly conjured up. All she had intended was to warn him against indiscriminate sendings of the kind that had brought her here — but might instead have attracted other, less benign, attention.

//There is no proof — no proof at all — of anything more than a wild guess!// she sent urgently, trying to cut through the web of remembered pain. //It’s more a wonder that you survived than that Antris chose to give up hope....//

//You survived.// There was bitterness behind that, which she met, and countered calmly.

//I was alone among humans from the start; and I learned that they could be friends.... I have friends here on this planet....// With a shock she remembered the teleport bracelet, torn loose in the struggle. If she were to keep her promise to return to the others ‘soon’ then she would need to leave at once in order to find her way back through a maze of unremembered streets; and if, as she knew in her heart she would, she chose instead to stay here for a while at least, then both Blake and Jenna needed to know.

He sensed her dismay. //What is it? What have you lost?//

//My bracelet — // She was already crouched down amongst the débris of fallen brickwork, hunting for a glint of metal in the faint light from the mouth of the alley. One hand came down on something sharp, and she snatched it back, wincing. But after a second her hand went out again, slowly, to gather up the twisted shards and confirm her reluctant guess. Splintered underfoot during those few seconds of struggle, what was left of her teleport bracelet would never work again. Even in this light, the twisted silver threads of the exposed circuits told her it was useless.

//Is your communicator broken? — I’m sorry...//

//In a way, it makes things easier — // she sent back ruefully. She could still contact the crew of the _Liberator_ , of course. But if she did so via telepathy, there was no way for them to reply. Whatever she chose to do now, they would have no chance to disagree....

With a mental shrug, Cally decided to postpone the decision.

//Both of us have been injured, and we are both sufficiently filthy to attract attention in the street,// she sent firmly. //There must be somewhere near here with cleansing facilities — or at least running water — // she amended in response to his dubious query. //I need better light in order to check your injuries properly; and while I’m doing that, you can tell me how you came to get them. Then we both need to contact our ships to explain where we are....//

In the end, they had to make do with a dimly-lit storeroom, a generous bowlful of warm water and a couple of handfuls of cleanish rag — and lucky to get as much as that, as the hard-faced woman who’d finally allowed them past her door had pointed out, sourly. Around these parts, people who looked as if they’d been on the losing end of a fight usually spelt trouble — from the winners — for those soft-hearted enough to take them in.... Cally, seething inwardly, had thanked their reluctant benefactor as sincerely as she could manage, and assured her that they would be as quick and unobtrusive as possible.

The storeroom could have been worse. It was at least warm and dry — they’d both been shivering by that stage — and the smaller cases of stores served fairly well as tables, seats or stools, according to requirements. However dim the lighting, it was still better than the darkness outside. For the first time, they had a chance to get a good look at each other.

Cally, whose clothing was relatively intact save for the jagged rip down the left sleeve where the knife-point had caught her, came off fairly well from the comparison. In contrast, her companion, who proved waxy-pale beneath the grime, made a sorry sight. A cap of black hair framed a boyish, snub-nosed face, swollen by repeated blows and already showing the first signs of what, on such pale skin, would later be truly spectacular bruising. Lanky arms and legs, showing all too clearly through torn tunic and trousers, bore the same marks of vicious beating, in addition to certain signs of deliberate knife-work which made Cally wince.

The story which she managed to piece together from him while trying to clean up the worst of the damage was simple enough. He had been on a ship which was currently calling briefly at Blackport in order to take on fuel. Together with most of the crew, he had gone into the town for a few hours’ ‘liberty’ before the ship was due to leave again in the early morning, planetary time.

A group of six or seven men had materialised out of nowhere at this point and attached themselves to the party, buying drinks all round and generally making themselves agreeable. They’d instantly identified him as the odd one out, physically gauche and ill-at-ease socially. Somehow, he had been skilfully separated off from the rest of the group, plied with free drinks and swept along on a genial bar-crawl during which the bars had become rapidly rougher and rougher, the offers of drinks more and more insistent, and his ‘hosts’ less and less good-natured as he failed to respond as expected to the quantities of alcohol so generously administered. For him, it had only been the escalation of existing nightmare when they had finally lost patience and dropped the threadbare mask of boozy friendship.

He had struggled, instinctively; but he would have stood no chance at all against even one of them, and they knew it. They had stripped him of everything he had — money, equipment, possessions — then, furious, demanded to know the location of the one item they had counted on finding that proved inexplicably missing: his pass-card for the ship’s access locks. Their demands had been accompanied first by threats, then blows, and finally, for a protracted period, by rather more scientifically-applied violence.

//I would have told them, if I’d known — I’d have told them anything, I’m not some kind of hero, I couldn’t hold out, they must have been able to see that — //

Cally guessed, bitterly, that by the end they had been trying simply to get some kind of sound out of him for their own satisfaction. They’d succeeded — only too well — but not on a level they were equipped to hear....

//Who has it, then, this pass-card? What use could it be?// Her confusion was as great as his.

//I know I had it when I left the _Gergovia_ — I checked it on the ramp, the Commander insisted.... One of the gang must have taken it; one of them must have been trying to cheat the others. Come to think of it....// The memory clicked into place with an almost audible snap.

//Any one of them could have taken the pass-card from my belt-pocket, if they’d caught sight of it. I didn’t hide the card — why should I? It’s not valuable....// More puzzlement. //But there was a seventh man right at the start... he went off, I remember that, they laughed at him because he left, they said he’d lose his share. The pass-card was what they were after, all of them, and he must have taken it for himself.... But why? Why?//

The plaintive question beat against her mind helplessly, like a trapped insect. //Why do such things?//

//Seven humans were prepared to go to great lengths to get hold of a pass-card that would give them access to the _Gergovia_.// Cally tried to cling to calm logic. //Now one of them has it. What good will it do him? Will it unlock your cargo hold? What cargo do you carry?//

//The pass-card opens the access locks on the exit ramp, that’s all... it saves reporting in to the duty officer. There _is_ no cargo hold. The _Gergovia_ is a scientific ship, not a freighter.// His indignant tone was almost comical; but infinitely preferable to the near-disintegration that had preceded it.

//She must carry _something_ of black-market value!// Cally insisted. //Precision equipment? Prototype weaponry? New drugs?//

//New drugs....// That seemed to hit him like a sick blow. //Not the Soteros — oh no, please....//

A hand reached out to touch her shoulder as she began to soak a fresh rag in the bowl and she let the rag fall into the water, looking up, startled, into imploring pale-blue eyes. //Tell me — on the black market — would a new treatment for a fatal disease be valuable? Enough to split seven ways and still be worth a fortune?//

//Is that what you were working on?// But she hardly needed to wait for his affirmative thought; her mind was racing ahead, appalled at the possibilities. //It could be worth millions. If you have actual samples on board the ship — //

Numb assent, coupled with formless panic. //What am I to do? — what _can_ I do? — // She felt his mind catch and steady itself against the silent support that was all she could offer.

//He will have to bluff his way onto the landing-pad area — or smuggle himself in somehow — either way, it will take time — // He was thinking fast now. //If I can get back to the ship, quickly, get that pass-card cancelled before it can be used — there’s a chance that no-one need ever even know — //

//It’s a chance worth trying,// Cally sent firmly, holding one end of the rag bound about the wrist of her ripped sleeve between gritted teeth and tugging hard on the other. Mercifully, the knife had glanced off down her arm, leaving only a shallow cut, and the teleport bracelet had taken much of the force of the blow.... //And I’m going with you. You’re in no condition to go alone. And you may need help.// Implicit behind both her offer and his eager acceptance of it lay their mutual fear of being alone; the exile’s fear of losing one last link with home.

Cally allowed her companion to take the bowl of fouled water from her, to replace the cases of provisions in their old positions and to try to clear up any signs of their brief, unorthodox occupation of the storeroom. She owed one last duty before she could accompany him with a clear conscience.... Kneeling on the bare floor, she closed her eyes and deliberately schooled her mind back into the clear, explicit verbalisation required for communication with aliens.

She reached out: Blake.... Gan... Vila... Avon... Jenna.... It was hard when she had no clear idea of where they were; harder still because there was no possibility of acknowledgement and no way of detecting success. Somehow, she held them all in her mind and broadcast clearly: //This is Cally. I have made contact with a young scientist from Auron who was under attack from a dockside gang; my teleport bracelet was damaged during the attack but I am not seriously harmed.//

Now for the important part. She tried to marshal her thoughts concisely.

//We suspect the aim of the attack was to gain access to supplies of a new drug for some black-market deal. I mean to help prevent that, if possible. I am not certain when I shall return, but I will find my own way back to our rooms at the hotel; there is no need to wait for me. I shall explain everything when we meet again. Blake, I will keep in touch when I can.... Good luck.//


	4. Compromise

The private rooms at the back of the casino, like the main gambling rooms, were decorated in the same heavy old-Earth style as the entrance hall. The stifling draped masses of false-velvet, the unused alcoves, ornate carving, lavish use of gold paint and the pillars that seemed to be everywhere were less oppressive on this scale than they had been in the narrow hallway; but they were no more to Gan’s taste. It was strange, this passion Alphas seemed to have for re-creating the past. Given the amount of time and effort they spent in assuring the lower grades that they’d never had it so good — no-one starved (except during the periods when the rationing system went wrong), no-one lacked clothing (even if the official issue was harsh enough to chafe skin raw), no-one was unemployed (only re-classified as ‘Wilfully Idle’ and forced to eke out existence on the black market), no-one was oppressed (Alphas were fellow-workers and therefore incapable by definition of oppressing anyone) — you’d have thought they would have avoided making such a show of their nostalgia for the bad old days. But then no-one among the lower grades ever seemed to question the automatic assumption that Old Calendar style meant high-class. Even in Blackport, which was supposed to be a Beta- and Gamma-grade resort, gold carving and heavy red curtains spelt out ‘TOP CASINO’ as clearly as if the words had been hung out on a sign over the door.

It made Gan feel out-of-place and nervous — which was probably the idea, but he disliked it all the same. It was absurd to feel clumsy in the face of furniture that was as squat and thick-legged as it was tasteless, but no amount of logic could shake off the idea that he was going to bump into something or damage it just by breathing on it. At least he wasn’t the only one who thought this place was hideous. There had been the unforgettable moment, as they’d all been coming in, when he’d happened to glance round at the precise instant to catch identical expressions of distaste on the faces of all three Alphas as they had their first sight of the room they’d hired.... Only Vila had looked at all cheerful, and of course as far as he was concerned, the more gold on display, the better — even if it was all fake.

Gan sighed. He had a feeling that the oppressive surroundings weren’t doing Blake’s temper any good either — he didn’t normally let Avon’s jibes get to him like that....

“Blake,” he interrupted calmly, cutting the other man off in mid-explosion, “if you keep shouting like that, you might as well have spared Avon the trouble of dealing with all those bugs in the first place.”

Blake stared at him for a moment, then let out the furious breath he’d drawn and gave Gan a rather rueful grin.

“Blake suffers from the common fallacy of equating volume with cogency of argument.” Even Avon’s face was a little flushed.

“Avon’s got a clever phrase for everything, but that doesn’t make him right either,” Vila observed, also ostensibly to Gan.

Avon turned on him. “I would hardly have thought you would find the prospect of rescuing the brave revolutionaries of Insecution from being drugged into happy oblivion particularly compelling.”

“As Blake’s ideas go, I’ve heard worse,” Vila disagreed cheerfully. “At least it doesn’t involve people shooting at us. No, it’s the idea of going off tonight I’m not too keen on. I mean, we’ve only been in Blackport a few hours. Jenna hasn’t even tried all the simulators, let alone beaten them; I want to see a bit of night-life, keep my hand in —”

“This is one planet where I do _not_ plan to end up breaking you out of the local jail, Vila,” Blake warned him.

“—I wouldn’t have got caught last time if you’d let me keep in practice, would I?” Vila countered. “Anyway, Avon’s only half-way through his grand plan to break the bank at ten-card larote, Gan hasn’t managed to sample all the floor-shows in town, Blake hasn’t even managed to relax yet —” he shot Blake an indignant glance — “and Cally’s the only one showing any sense — she’s not here.”

“We are not leaving Cally behind.” Gan made it a simple statement of fact.

“Of course we’re not leaving Cally behind!” Blake snapped.

“I see no grounds for the premature assumption that ‘we’ are planning to leave at all,” Avon observed softly.

Gan’s fingers were clenched around the edge of the ornate moulding on the arm of his chair. He relaxed them with a conscious effort. “Avon, the Federation is using the planet Insecution as a testing-ground for plague warfare. We have to do something.”

“I don’t see why.” Jenna had remained on her feet, and now her stance was a challenge. “This isn’t a hospital ship. And if Blake’s information is correct, the Federation isn’t planning to let these people die anyway — just to pump them full of pacification drugs and turn them into uncomplaining drudges like the rest of the population. If we interfere, without the Federation drugs half of them will probably die of the plague, and the other half during the reprisals when the hunt for Blake closes in.” Her impatient pacing took her behind Avon’s seat, and he glanced up.

“Insecution is in the Fourth Sector, one of the old Seven Sectors that have been at the heart of the Federation since the days of the First Expansion. All three factions in the nominally independent government have been in the pay of the Federation for generations. I imagine the only reason why it has taken them this long to formalise the relationship is that Insecution is a cold world which barely supports a subsistence-level agriculture and a handful of cities clustered near the equator on the central continent. In other words, almost too poor to be worth the trouble of annexing. Not even Blake can claim that the demise of the pro-independence movement will have the slightest effect on the long- or short-term fate of the Federation.”

Blake’s chair, thrust carelessly back, caught on the carpet and almost overturned. He was on his feet, leaning over the heavy table towards Avon. “‘The demise of the pro-independence movement’ — that’s a comfortably sanitised way of putting it, isn’t it, Avon? They aren’t even going to be granted the grace of a convenient death. The Federation wants them alive; and it wants them alive so that Central Security can ream out their minds searching for the information it wants, enough information to ensure that no other rebel group will ever hold out for twenty years in the face of everything the local administration can try.” A fractional pause.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever made the intimate acquaintance of Central Security, Avon. You’ve never deigned to talk about the circumstances of your arrest, have you? Perhaps you don’t know that interrogation and mindwipe isn’t a clean, surgical process. Conditioning isn’t administered by doctors in a syringe.

“They take a professional pride in their work at Central Security. They strive for maximum efficiency. After all, the ‘patients’ aren’t going to remember anything — those that are destined to survive, that is — so why bother wasting time on distractions such as anæsthetic? Of course, if the conditioning ever begins to break down — you start to remember.” Blake’s teeth were set. “You remember even when you think you’ve learned to forget — even in your dreams.”

It wasn’t Central Security interrogation that featured in Gan’s dreams. It was her — the girl they’d murdered — and the experimental medical facility they’d sent him to, later, after he’d choked the life out of the man who’d killed her, with his own two hands.... He’d been lucky, you might say. After all, he’d survived the surgery, and the limiter had turned out to be one of the experiments that worked the way it was intended to. They’d even approved it for general use, later. The worst dreams were the ones where it was her, not him, in the experimental facility, and the experiment in progress was not the one he’d survived himself, but one of the others, the ones that had failed....

“Believe me, Blake —” Avon’s voice, pitched low and vicious, caught Gan back from the brink of memory — “you are not alone in your noble suffering. I’ve lost as much to Central Security as you have; but unlike you, I don’t plan to let it rule my life —”

“All right, Blake.” Jenna’s voice cut deliberately across Avon’s as she broke off her pacing and dropped down into her chair on his left. She stared pointedly at Blake until he too sank back down into his place. “We’ll go to Insecution and we’ll do what we can. But not tonight.” She glanced up at the time-display on the wall. “The night’s still young, and I for one mean to make the most of it. You promised us three days in Blackport, Blake. At the very least you owe us —”

“Shut up! Just shut up, all of you, and listen —” Vila flinched under the barrage of incredulous Alpha stares, but held his ground. “I can hear Cally —”

In the silence that followed, Gan too became aware of the sudden cool trickle of telepathy behind his eyes, Cally’s thoughts clear in his mind: //...scientist from Auron who was under attack from a dockside gang...//

A quick glance around the table showed him identical frowns of concentration; at least he and Vila weren’t the only two hearing her. Gan closed his eyes in a fierce effort of memorisation, willing himself to catch every word. Cally’s report flowed to its end like a cool alien thread through the mass of his own unformed thoughts: //...keep in touch when I can.... Good luck.//

Gan looked up slowly, considering that, and caught Vila’s eye. The small man gave him a cheerful grin. “Sounds as if Cally’s enjoying herself, anyway,” he observed.

Gan thought back, startled; perhaps there _had_ been a certain quiet relish behind the carefully-worded phrases.... “I hope she knows what she’s doing.”

He couldn’t help remembering some of Jenna’s more lurid smuggling stories. Organised drug rings tended to be bad news for anyone who tried to interfere with them — particularly the ones backed by the Terra Nostra. And Cally was quite capable of trying to take one on single-handed.

Blake’s thoughts were obviously running along the same lines. He was trying to contact her using his teleport bracelet, frowning. “Cally? Cally!”

“If her communicator were working, Blake, she would presumably have used it.” Avon sounded weary. “I take it that this latest development has not affected your touching determination not to leave without Cally? In that case, since she has gone off on her own and clearly has no intention of rejoining you in the near future, I assume the rest of us are now free to return to our own pursuits.”

Blake looked around almost blankly, as though he had temporarily forgotten Avon’s presence. For a moment their eyes met and held, then Blake looked away, down the table towards Jenna and Gan. “I’m going back up to the _Liberator_. Cally may need help.”

“I’m going with you,” Gan said at once, relieved at the chance for action.

“You would.” Avon’s tone dismissed Gan as an irrelevance. “Blake, while the logic of this sudden change of heart entirely escapes me —”

Blake glanced back at him. “Don’t worry, Avon —” his tone was almost equally dry — “I wasn’t expecting you or Vila.... Wait a minute.” His voice sharpened. “Where _is_ Vila?”

Vila’s place at the table, opposite Jenna and Avon, was undeniably empty. Gan looked around the room, frowning. Instinctively, he glanced under the table, and flushed as he caught Avon watching with a condescending smile. Following the gaze of the others, he took in the location of the thief’s empty chair, conveniently close to the heavy swing doors leading to the corridor beyond. The right-hand door was still perceptibly trembling.

“It looks as if Vila decided to take pre-emptive action.” Even Jenna couldn’t resist a chuckle at Blake’s expense. “He can move very quietly when he wants to....”

She got up to leave, moving round the table. Her face softened as she caught sight of Blake’s expression. “He’ll be back — tomorrow morning, I imagine. We all will, Blake. And I think Avon’s right; Cally isn’t going to be back much before then anyway. If she’s not back tomorrow, then we’ll worry. But there’s not much point doing anything tonight.”

She frowned. “What exactly are you two hoping to achieve up there anyway?”

Blake ran a hand through the back of his hair, looking up at her. “With Zen, Orac and the teleport — if Cally does get into trouble, at least we’ll have some chance of tracing her. More than if we stay down here —”

— Worrying, Gan completed silently with a rueful smile. He recognised the symptoms. So did Jenna, apparently. She sighed.

“I suppose it’s no use pointing out that you need a few hours to unwind just as much as the rest of us do? Vila was right, you know — I don’t believe you’ve managed to relax since we’ve been here —”

There was a certain dangerous look in Blake’s eye, and Jenna, obviously deciding not to push her luck, turned to leave with a shrug.

“The difference, of course,” Avon said softly, still seated, “is that when Blake’s judgement goes it is the rest of us who suffer for it.”

“I have no doubt you will let us all know when that starts to happen!” Blake snapped, getting up in his turn and beckoning for Gan to come forward to join him at the door. “I’m hoping that by tomorrow morning Gan and I will have made contact with Cally and we’ll all be ready to leave.”

“I see.” Avon’s expression was bland. “And if some of us are not ready?”

“Believe it or not, Avon, I have no intention of leaving you behind either.” Blake’s voice was decidedly cool, and Gan looked at him sharply.

“I — see.” Avon’s teeth showed in a wolfish smile.

Blake turned on his heel abruptly and thrust through the swinging doors. Gan, following him closely, glanced back once at Avon sitting calmly alone behind the heavy table. Then worries over Avon were submerged in the more immediate question of whether Orac, their unpredictable new supercomputer, would be both capable and willing to reverse the process that had brought the entire crew down here, by operating the main teleport switch in order to bring Blake and himself back up to the _Liberator_ without teleporting the others....


	5. Spaceport

Finding their way back to the spaceport proved easier than Cally had feared. At first merely visible as glimpses to the east above the frontage of the lower-level buildings, the illuminated pylons of the rocket-field rapidly came to dominate the entire skyline, and every street she chose seemed to feed ultimately into one of the major transport arteries leading towards the port. On foot, battered and breathless, the two telepaths attracted a certain amount of inevitable attention; but the reputation of the dockside areas was rough enough for her to warn off those who showed signs of intending to accost them with no more than a scowl and a significant hand laid on the energy weapon belted openly at her waist.

She called a forced halt at the edge of the port zone, in the shade of one of the security towers that controlled entry to the main landing field where all interplanetary and longer-range craft with atmospheric entry capabilities were serviced. Many of the cargoes traded through Blackport might be technically illegal, but port security itself was kept tight in order to placate owner-captains with every reason in the world to be nervous about who could gain access to their ships.

Cally had set a gruelling pace in response to her companion’s unvoiced urgency, but she judged a rest now to be essential. Her own breath was dry in her throat, and though he stubbornly refused to complain, she could not help but be aware, through the link that they still, tacitly, shared, that the other’s distress was far worse.

//Lean on me and get your breath back, first,// she sent firmly as he protested and tried to pull her onward. //With no identification and no pass-card, you will need to talk your way into the spaceport and back on board your ship; and in your current condition — // a touch of wry humour flowed between them — //doing so will probably take all the breath you can get.//

Out of habit, she urged him a few steps further, into the shelter of the deeper shadows beneath the braced girder-legs of the tower above them, and frowned as she again noted his limp. //It’s the knee, isn’t it?// Reluctant assent. //You had better let me take a look at it. May I?//

She gently disengaged the arm he had draped around her shoulders for support and dropped to crouch beside him, probing the offending joint with cautious fingers. //Deep bruising, I think, nothing more serious,// she reassured him. //But if your ship has a medical unit, you should use a subdural regenerator to reduce the swelling; and to treat the bruising on your face, at least, unless you plan to spend the next few days attracting attention at every turn. Without instruments, there’s little I can do — I’m not a trained med-tech — //

Protest, and admiration: //You seem experienced enough — //

//Experienced, yes — trained, no.// Cally couldn’t hide a certain bitterness. //My other clone-sisters have more medical knowledge than I. They all chose to study bioreplication or genetic engineering, but I — even in those days, I suppose I wanted to be different. No, my formal training was in communications. I know more of human medicine than I do of ours. Everything I know was picked up after I came to Saurian Major, by observation or by desperate improvisation when there was no-one else willing even to try to help. I’m a self-taught auxiliary — a field-medic at best. I’ve had more experience than I ever wanted in the aftermath of skirmishes in the face of superior forces, or sabotage gone wrong, or harsh living in primitive conditions. Oh, we had medical equipment, while it still worked, raided from civilian establishments abandoned when the Federation moved in — and the _Liberator_ ’s equipment isn’t so very different — //

She sat back on her heels, staring up at him. //What is it? Did I hurt you? I’m sorry — // The bars of deep shadow cast across them both by the skeletal lower structure of the tower hid his face; but he had stiffened and pulled away from her, the link between them turned sour by suspicion and hurt.

//What have I done?// Her mind beat against his with growing anger. //Tell me!// But she could get nothing clear from him; only cold-dawning fear, and withdrawal.

“My name is Amery.” He used the formal wording almost reluctantly.

Still she didn’t understand. Spoken names were for the convenience of computer records or data transmissions, for non-telepaths — handy labels for those whom one had never met. Why offer her his formal name now, when they could each have picked out the other by mind-pattern alone, even from among clone-siblings? And why with such dread of the response?

She rose to her feet, drawing back from him in her turn. “My name is Cally —” she flung the words as a challenge, half-guessing in that last second — “Cally of the _Liberator_!”

//I should have known. I should have guessed — // His thought was barely verbalised, a trickle of bitterness between them; but the torrent of images that flooded free at the mention of her name told her everything she needed to know, both of his assumptions and of hers. Fanatic, terrorist, anarchist, saboteur — for a dizzying moment she saw herself through the distorting-glass of the Federation, her defeat of six unskilled ruffians in the alley proving her a sinister killer, her offer of help proving her a manipulative spy.

//I was exiled for urging that Auron should end its isolation and actively oppose the Federation,// she sent slowly. They stared at each other with disbelief and growing hostility. //But your group — you left Auron to _join_ the Federation, to give them your bio-genetic research, to work for them on diseases — // Like the plague that had killed all remaining resistance on Saurian Major — no. No. He had left Auron only half a standard year ago, long after that plague had run its course. Of those deaths, at least, she knew him to be innocent.

And they had deep-linked together. If he were corrupt, self-serving, even merely obsessed enough by knowledge to be careless of the consequences, there was no way that she would not have seen it in him — she launched that thought back at him fiercely. //If I were the monster of destruction, the manipulative killer you make me out to be — do you really think I could have hidden it from you? Do you honestly suppose you could link with me and not know? Whatever I am, whatever I may have done, I am not what your masters have taught you to believe — //

Look, she willed him wordlessly, recklessly opening her mind to him, ignoring the hostility beating through the ruin of the link of trust that had existed between them. //This is Cally. This is the truth of me.//

//I... don’t... understand.... // She felt him moving uncertainly through the upper levels of her mind, and it took every drop of discipline she had not to slam her shields back down. This was not like the deep link they had shared before. It was wholly one-sided. On impulse, she had made herself totally vulnerable to him, trusting to the gut instinct telling her that whatever his political loyalties, he was honourable enough not to pry and not to hurt her. ‘He who trusts can never be betrayed,...’

But the sting of that old saying lay in the bitter twist at its tail: ‘...only mistaken.’ When you were dead — or mind-crippled — was it truly worth the knowledge that you had not denied trust to the one who destroyed you? She had always believed that it would never come to that: she held on, held her mind open... and after an endless moment that seemed to last an eternity, felt the gentle apology and retreat that meant she had judged him rightly.

She opened eyes she did not remember closing and brushed aside sweat-dampened hair, meeting his pale young gaze with a steady look whose confidence was only part-feigned.

//What I was told of you... was false,// he offered her gravely. //But... are you willing to accept, in turn, that what you believe of the Federation... may also be at least partly false?//

Instinct flared up to deny the possibility — it was more than just belief; she _knew_ the Federation, had suffered at its hands....

//All you know of the Federation is how it deals with those who seek to destroy it!// He caught her by the shoulders, his eyes intent on her as if willing her to understand. //The Federation is _people_ — some good, perhaps some bad, I’ll grant you that — but I’ve lived with them and worked among them. I know them. They may be humans, mind-dumb aliens, isolated individuals all their lives; but they’re just people, ordinary people who can be hurt and maimed by violence just as we can.//

He moved forward, deliberately, so that the shadow of the girders slipped down across his body and left his face exposed to the harsh security lights, the ravages of the beating he’d taken mercilessly disclosed. He was very close to her now. She could read no trace of anything but passionate honesty either in his face or in the mind linked to hers.

//The Federation isn’t composed of faceless cogs in a relentless machine of conquest. It’s just an attempt by humans to do the best they can, for planets to co-operate instead of fighting each other or struggling to stand alone — without the Federation the galaxy would be back in the days of the Atomic Wars. Without the Federation whole planets would starve, as colonies did in the old days when native predators destroyed their only crop or freak weather patterns proved too extreme for Terran species to tolerate. Without the Federation there would be no interstellar navigation control, no central universities, no protection from pirate raids on commercial shipping — so many things that are beyond the resources of an individual colony planet, that require co-operation and central guidance. Humans _need_ the Federation — //

He broke off and turned away, releasing his grasp on her. His mind was full of frustration; why could he not get her to understand, to _see_ the concept that burned so clearly for him?

//It’s as if the humans have been unconsciously striving towards what we have on Auron,// he sent at last. //They are trying to overcome their isolation and work together as a unified whole, however imperfect. Auron needs to be part of that. We need to be an influential voice in the Federation, to join now while our knowledge and technology are still of value to them, so that we can help to restrain excesses rather than just condemning them. Auron’s place is as a guiding force at the heart of the Federation, not as a single isolated system stubbornly hoarding our knowledge under the guise of ‘neutrality’. Whether we act or not, the Federation will eventually expand around us and we will either be absorbed by default or left utterly without influence in a human-dominated galaxy. In the long term, Auron _cannot_ remain neutral.//

//There, at all events, we agree — // The force of his impassioned beliefs was sweeping through Cally, threatening to overwhelm her certainties even as she clung to them. She was right — she knew blindly, stubbornly, that she was right — but in the face of that torrent she could no longer recall the arguments that she knew she could use against him, only Blake’s hot determination that the Federation should be destroyed. Blake believed utterly in what he was doing — Blake could not be wrong....

//The Federation has one thing at least in common with Auron already,// she managed at last. //Neither of them tolerates active dissent. We two exiles are both living proof of that.//

The sky flickered, away to their left, and an instant later the ground trembled to the deep explosive roar as a booster-assisted ship lifted off from the rocket field a short way to the north. The sound shook them both back to an awareness of the present. She felt his sudden panic — how long have we been standing here? — and guessed at its cause. And, after all, the gang she’d fought off had been neither Federation or rebels, but merely slum criminals out for an easy victim, she was sure of it... in fact, whether he had been working on plague cures, as he believed, or on plague warfare, it made little difference — she shuddered to think of either in the hands of unscrupulous black-marketeers.

//Will you still accept my help?// Cally sent bluntly. //It may not be too late to cancel that pass-card before any harm can come of it. I won’t seek to come on board your ship — // A Federation Central Science Complex vessel, of course. How could she ever have deluded herself that he had meant to refer to anything else?

He gave her a guarded look, then tried a cautious smile, offering her his left hand, forearm parallel to the ground, wrist bent down, palm outward and fingers curled, in an ancient warrior gesture that only children still used. //Truce?//

She covered his hand cross-wise with her own warm fingers, remembering back ruefully to long-past days in the nurseries.

//I trust you. Truce.//

She let her hand rest against his for a moment, taking comfort from the mere physical contact, before resolutely bending her thoughts to the question of the stolen pass-card. //Surely the duty officer will check to see who is entering the ship even if the use of the pass-card saves him from actually having to operate the locks? Just how far can a total stranger get inside a ship anyway without being spotted, even with most of the crew on shore-leave?//

//The duty officer for tonight was Lanuv, and she’s far too lazy to make any checks that aren’t printed out in triplicate and sealed to her console.// Her renewed offer of alliance seemed tacitly to have been accepted. //But by the same token, she’ll probably let me in without asking too many awkward questions....//

* * *

Getting access to the landing-pad area proved almost worryingly easy. Port Security waved them through with no more than a request for the name of the ship and her scheduled take-off window. Their somewhat battered condition gave rise to no more comment than a shrug and a raised eyebrow, although the younger of the two officers on duty had made a low-voiced comment to his colleague which appeared to refer to Cally’s stamina. For some reason both humans had found this very funny.... Obviously Blackport was only too accustomed to young officers who left the spaceport in their best clothes and came back exhausted in tatters, having lost their ID but having acquired a random female companion.

The main landing field itself was a vast and confusing area of black hard-pan where individual ships were almost totally obscured from view by gantries, service vehicles, many of which were themselves almost as large as an orbital shuttle, spare tanks and empty containers marooned apparently at random in the centre of otherwise clear zones, and a seemingly illogical and endless maze of piping. Cally ducked under vast ribbed sections of pipe almost ten feet in diameter that hung at head-height without visible support between unmanned gantries; detoured around even larger grey cylindrical monstrosities at ground-level, from the interior of which could be heard ominous throbbing and gurglings; and everywhere found herself menaced by whipping coils of flexible plastic that connected every conceivable piece of equipment with every other piece, thrashing to and fro in a vicious parody of life prompted by the pulsing of the various violently-coloured fluids that could be glimpsed within them. Blinding lights stabbed down from overhead structures to disorient her at meaningless intervals as the two threaded their way through the chaos that represented a working spaceport at night.

Little was visible of the _Gergovia_ , when they reached her, save the forked grey tongue of the exit ramp that ran up to the main locks in the lower curve of her streaked greenish side. Some helpful individual had placed a small freestanding sign that read ‘ _C.A.S. Gergovia_ ’ at the foot of the ramp. Cally almost fell over it.

She remained courteously at ground level while her companion made his way up the exit ramp to activate the comm unit just inside the outer doors. After a long pause, a bored female voice answered.

“All right, what is it this time? I’ve done your customs checks, I’ve done the fuelling manifest, I’ve told you twice I don’t have the authority to release a copy of the running log — Bright gem-shards!” A graphic noise of disgust came over the speaker. “Has the visual on this thing just been shot to pieces, Amery, or has someone been rearranging your outfit with a rotary pair of laser shears? Don’t tell me your pass-card went for the chop as well....”

“I had an accident in the town, Lanuv. I need to change my clothes; and I think I left my pass-card in my cabin somewhere. Perhaps I left it in my lab coat this morning?”

He was as poor a liar as she herself was, Cally thought with a sinking heart. And non-telepaths seemed to find it so easy. //You should have told her the truth — that you were attacked and the card stolen. Now how will you explain when you ask her to cancel it?//

//I don’t want anyone to know I was responsible — // She sensed a note of panic in him; which, she thought with a wry twist, was one more thing that started to make a good deal more sense now that she knew it was the Federation he had been working for.

“All right, all right —” Lanuv yawned ostentatiously — “give me twenty seconds and I’ll rejig the computer to let you in. The dollybird stays shoreside, though, Amery. Standing orders from Commander Chu. No port girls brought back on board. You never know where they’ve been.” Another yawn turned into a lazy chuckle.

Amery had flushed a painful red and Cally reached out to him in alarm along the link, urging calm. //It doesn’t matter — let her believe me a hired pleasure girl if she wishes. It saves explanation for both of us.//

She mimed a pout and coy farewell wave at him for the benefit of the visual pick-up as the _Gergovia_ ’s main door dragged noisily open, and watched it seal sluggishly behind him, hugging her elbows against her for warmth. It was a long wait. She tried to guess what might be happening inside the ship from the traces she picked up from him. A hint of nervous impatience — was he feigning a search of his cabin? — was followed by a hot wash of embarrassment which was almost undoubtedly an encounter with the disconcerting Lanuv. Her guess was confirmed a second later.

//Please — do you think you could move somewhere further away? Lanuv can see you on the bridge monitors and she’s starting to wonder why you’re still waiting — she wants me to go out and pay you off — //

Cally sent him a hint of reassuring laughter and promptly departed, swaying pettishly. When she was certain that she was out of range of the _Gergovia_ ’s monitors, she began to search around for a more sheltered spot and finally settled for a niche where she could lean against a great vertical pipe that radiated a welcome warmth. She hoped that was all it was radiating. It also bore a thick coating of grime, but her silks were already in a sad state and she was too cold to care much.

With the warmth soaking into her bones, she allowed herself to drift into a pleasantly numb state, buoyed up by Amery’s growing hope as he presumably searched the ship and found nothing wrong — The sick jolt of devastation that caught at her through the link shocked her back to full alertness in an instant. //What is it?//

But she was already certain of the answer. Child-like, he had left checking the project he cared about most until the last — his ‘Soteros’ project, the one they had feared from the first to be the thieves’ target. And now it seemed that they had delayed too long before returning to the ship.

//How much has gone?// she sent clearly, trying to override the waves of distress that were making it hard enough for her to think straight and could be leaving him no capacity for rational thought at all. She let him feel the edge of her irritation. Even in one who had been alone for too long, such lack of mental discipline in an adult was deplorable. //How much?//

//One case out of twelve — as much as one man can carry — // That came through clearly enough. //Not enough to invalidate the project. Only enough to destroy whatever chances I had of making a new career... only enough to ruin me....// The words dissolved into a morass of self-pity until they were no longer distinguishable.

Cally sent him a whiplash stab of anger, hard enough to hurt, and steadfastly ignored the wondering pained response. //There is no way that you can permit an untested experimental treatment to be sold on the black market by unscrupulous criminals. You must inform the port authorities. Spaceport security is the one area of law that Blackport ensures is strictly enforced. The authorities will track down your thief for you, and make an example of him.//

And, as an incidental result, the name of Amery of the Auronar would be publicly associated, however unfairly, with the negligence and ineptitude which had allowed the theft to take place. It might not destroy his career; but for a young scientist who was already an exile and a lonely outsider, being made a public laughing-stock and possibly dismissed from the project which had been his whole life since leaving Auron could well equate to career-death within the Federation. Cally sighed and sent a mute apology after her reprimand. But she did not weaken. //That drug sample must be found before it is resold — //

//Wait!// She could almost feel the idea forming in his mind as the spark of excitement shot between them. //All those twelve biotransit cases were tracer-marked before the _Gergovia_ left the Central Science Complex — both for security and to test the new tracer system. There were a set of hand-held detectors for testing purposes — I know where I can lay my hands on one, and the claim was that the tracers could be picked up from halfway round a planet — //

//No! This is not some quest out of a children’s tale where the hero sets all to rights single-handed! You cannot use this tracer mechanism to hunt down the thief on your own. We need to inform the authorities.//

Impatience. //I’m not a fool — I’ve got no intention of forcing a confrontation I know I can’t win! All I want to do is to retrieve my work with the minimum possible fuss. I don’t believe the thief will be able to find a buyer tonight; he’ll cache the case somewhere and come back later. If I can detect the tracer emissions, all I need to do is wait until the emissions stop moving, allow a reasonable length of time to let the thief get well clear, and then just walk in and pick the samples up. He won’t know that he is being trailed; the cases aren’t visibly marked in any way and I’ll never need to go near him. There’s no risk involved, and if I can just locate the cache and make it back to the ship before take-off — //

//The risk rather depends on the location of your cache,// Cally observed, thinking of thieves’ dens and other unsavoury hiding-places. //But I suppose it could work ....// The idea was ridiculous — it _was_ just like a children’s story — but, like its originator, it had a certain madcap charm which she could not deny. The worst of it was that he was quite capable of trying to put it into action, and getting himself into real trouble in the process. If he did end up walking into some thieves’ kitchen down in the dockside slums, he would need back-up from someone at least slightly better-qualified to get him out again.

//I’m coming with you,// she sent firmly, and received a surge of genuine gratitude — //I knew I could count on you!// — coupled to a vivid little image of herself as a legendary warrior of Auron with a coronet of bright psionic flame. She couldn’t help smiling. Last defender of lost causes, was she? Well, in the old stories they always won in the end.

//Stay where you are; I’ll get some equipment and come to find you,// he instructed her, enthusiasm returning with the prospect of new hope. Cally acknowledged this order gravely, and leaned back against the warmth of the pipework, watching the occasional glimpses of the activity of the spaceport passing through the lighted areas visible beyond the mouth of the recess in which she sheltered. By night or by day, with ships arriving constantly, each with its crew operating to a different time schedule, Blackport never slept.

A great domed tractor crawled past with a gantry in tow, and a cluster of brightly-clad spacers straggled across a pool of bright light the the near distance, on their way back to their ship after what she guessed from their unsteady pace to have been a riotous night’s leave. Somewhere out of sight there was shouting, and warning sirens crackled in token of an unknown emergency. The air was sharp with the tang of sweating metal, of ionisation and the undefinable odour that sifted out of over-worked spacecraft. Jenna would have seen excitement and the prospect of adventure in the orderly chaos of preparation for flight. Cally found it ugly and bewildering. She sensed Amery’s mind feeling its way towards her, and left her niche with relief to meet him.

For a moment she completely failed to recognise her battered protegé in the dark-haired young officer who joined her. At some point he had had the unexpected good sense to spend a few minutes in the medical bay as she had directed, and the improvement was startling. The black hair still threw into unfortunate relief the pallor of his face and washed-out blue eyes, but the contusions and incipient bruises were gone, and while nothing could disguise his essentially lanky build, he no longer moved stiffly as though every step caused him pain. He was warmly dressed in a high-collared uniform of scientific grey with a small black instrument in his right hand which she took to be the promised hand-detector unit, and a hastily-wrapped cloth bundle in his right hand which he offered to her with a shy smile. //I thought you might need these — //

Cally shook out the cloth cautiously and found that she held a spare grey uniform jacket and a small emergency first-aid pack.

//For your arm — I wasn’t sure what to bring.... I hope the jacket isn’t very much too big?//

She felt a wash of absurd gratitude at the unexpectedly practical gifts, and saw him flush with happiness as he caught her response, the tentative smile relaxing into genuine pleasure. Struggling into the welcome warmth of the jacket, long sleeves flapping, she looked down a little ruefully at the Federation emblem displayed boldly across her breast. The situation would have appealed to Blake’s sense of humour....

//Blake would help you, you know, if you asked. He could save you a lot of time — and it would be all right — no-one in the Federation would need to know anything about it — //

She shrank back mentally from the revulsion Blake’s name released in Amery, first astonished at the response, then indignant. //That is no more true of Blake than it is of me! And the story about the children is totally false — //

//Naturally he would claim that!// The thought would have been condescending if it had not been so bitter. //And the deaths of Federation guards who were only doing their duty? The civilian personnel who had the bad fortune to be at work in a ‘legitimate military target’ when Blake chose to destroy it? The disruption of interplanetary communications, of spacecraft design, of scientific research on the grounds that it could be used for weapons development? Are those all false?// He was looking at her as if he had only just remembered who she was.

//Blake and his kind are prepared to sabotage food production so that the resulting ration shortages will be blamed on the government; to encourage young malcontents to steal sidearms and fire on Federation troops so that they can be held up as martyrs after their deaths by the men who manipulated them. All he cares about is to discredit the Federation by fair means or foul in order to throw doubt on his own conviction and those of the criminals who accompany him. How can you allow yourself to be duped into following a man like that, who leaves nothing in his wake but wanton destruction in the name of freedom?//

//If you really think me such a dupe, then I wonder that you deign to accept my help!// Cally was white with anger, both at the insult to Blake and to herself. //I follow Blake because he shares my ideals. He’s the only person I’ve ever known who is willing to act on what he believes to be right instead of just in his own interest. If I believed half of what you claim, I’d leave the _Liberator_ and carry on the fight alone — //

But could I? she wondered suddenly, coldly; would I truly have the strength, now, to place my ideals before my friends? Or would I just stay with the _Liberator_ because it is the nearest thing to a home I have left, and let the Federation fester unopposed in its own corruption? Suppose Blake were killed; could I really leave the others and carry on alone?

Her anger had ebbed away, leaving her drained and sick at heart. //You are wrong about Blake. Blake is — // On impulse, she tried to send him a mental pattern encapsulating Blake, as if Blake had been a telepath himself; but she had never attempted to describe a human in such a way before, and the result was so grotesque that it shook an incredulous laugh from them both.

//I’ve never heard anyone claim even Blake to be quite such a deformed monster as _that_!// Laughter transformed his mind, softening the steely-edged ardour, that was dangerously close to blind fanaticism, back into no more than the passionate ideals of a very young man.

//That was a mistake!// Cally protested helplessly, letting his affectionate mockery warm her.

//So I should hope... or I’d never dare to sleep at nights, with something like that loose in the galaxy.// He took her hand in his, looking down at her more seriously. //I won’t ask you to break the personal loyalty you obviously feel for this man Blake — but I don’t want you to involve him in this.//

Cally let her eyes fall in mute assent, too relieved to find the tenuous bond between them still somehow intact to have any wish to press the matter further. //Perhaps we should make a start, then — if you know how to work that detector?// she prompted gently, slipping her hand free from his grasp.

//I’ve never tried, but it seems simple enough....// After a moment’s brief struggle, a flat plate above the pistol-grip handle lit up softly, revealing itself to be a screen. Amery rotated the device from side to side experimentally, and they both peered at the display.

//There are signals from two sources,// Cally diagnosed after a confusing moment. She explored the controls confidently. //There must be some way to analyse and separate them....// Half-remembered training came to her aid: imagine two incoming sub-beam communications scrambled by a hyperspace interlock... what was the control sequence we were taught that would trigger automatic analysis?... She shut her eyes and let her fingers run through the drill. Halfway through, it began to come back.

//That’s it!// Cally’s eyes flew open at Amery’s jubilant admiration. The signals on the screen had separated into two clear groupings, each indicating range, direction and other parameters which she guessed to be relative altitude, speed, and so on.

Amery swung the detector with excitement, and watched the readings change. //The strong signal, there, must be from the remaining cases in the biosecure locker in the _Gergovia_. Which means that this other signal, moving away from us — //

Cally took the handset from him, killed the strong signal, amplified the other one. //He’s over towards the town and on the move. We’ll get closer, wait for the signal to stop waiting and go straight in once we’re sure he’s gone — // She offered him the detector again with a gesture which, although neither of them knew it, was almost identical to the motions used by their forebears when they had barely learned to walk on their hind legs. Her mind was fierce and keen. //Shall we hunt?//


	6. Brief Encounter

Vila slipped quietly through the shadows along the side of the street with an ease born of long years of practice. He glanced down the double row of grimy stunted buildings with something close to affection. It was almost like home. He’d spent the chief part of his life — the part he preferred to remember, rather than the part that had been dragged out in various institutions on the occasions they’d caught up with him — on streets just like these, sleeping through the day and coming out at night, like this, to see what he could find; maybe to crack the fancy lock on some Alpha’s private apartment, pick up a few fenceable items; maybe to make his way over to the freight terminals and try to get hold of a couple of packs of the new protein cultures or some vat-grown fruit before it all disappeared into the bottomless pit of the rationing warehouses. You always saw stuff going into those warehouses — at least, it featured heavily on the public viscasts, when you could get to a screen — but somehow the luxury food never seemed to come out again. Not in the direction of the Delta areas, anyway.

He’d got a nice little racket going once, in partnership with Isel, a Beta-grade technician who worked down at the freight terminals and used to hold back a whole crate for him every so often out of the shipments she handled. She’d try to pick something different every time; on one disastrous occasion it had been a container-ful of soft yellow fruit from Palmero, which none of his usual buyers would touch. To make matters worse, the whole batch had gone brown and squishy within a couple of days and he’d had a nightmare week trying to get them into the recyclers and clear up the storage space he’d been using before the smell got him arrested — or lynched by the rest of the inhabitants of that apartment. They’d lost a lot of money on that episode, and after that he’d insisted on only handling pre-cultured or cryo-packed items, however much extra trouble it gave her.

The luxury food scam had been a good one while it lasted. Safe, too — with the amount of official graft that went on, nobody would ever have noticed a handful of consignments that went ‘missing’ somewhere along the line after the technician had formally logged them in, but before they reached the warehouses. That was the trouble. Isel had got greedy and invited in the big boys; and the big boys, who knew a good thing when they saw it, had pushed out Vila’s little one-man operation and moved in big-time. So Vila had been back to working the crowds for a pocketful of loose change, while Isel had been coining it in... and when she’d got too greedy and the Administration had taken note of what was happening, on the day the squad of police had arrived at the door of the flashy new apartment she’d just started to rent, Isel had jumped to the conclusion that it had been Vila who’d squealed on her — which it hadn’t been, as it happened — and somehow arranged for a gang of heavies to pay a visit to him that night. Another neighbourhood he’d had to leave in a hurry with no more possessions than he’d come in with....

It was funny to think that if Isel had stayed content with the thirty per cent cut he’d been giving her, he’d probably still be on Earth now, safe under a dome and as prosperous as he’d ever been. He might even have taken up a pair-bond with Isel — she’d been a big woman with flashing black eyes and a mane of blue-black hair. Not quite his type, but he’d always liked his women generously-proportioned, and she’d definitely been interested. Blackport was a Beta resort, come to think of it; they might even have ended up coming out here for a holiday on the proceeds of the protein cultures and pear-flavoured desserts. Blackport was definitely his kind of town... even if it didn’t have a dome, which left you feeling exposed under all that bare sky.

Vila squinted upwards. The _Liberator_ was up there somewhere. She’d be in a standard thousand-spacial low orbit, which meant he might even be able to see her from the ground if he looked up at just the right moment.... And for once, they were actually here legally, in an approved parking orbit assigned to them by planetary flight control. Not that Blake had given the ship’s true name and ID, of course — that would have been asking for trouble on a nominally Federated world, where the records were transmitted straight to Sector Control, and from there, presumably, to Central Control on Earth where you could bet even money they had supercomputers running through every scrap of data looking for key words like ‘Liberator’ and ‘Blake’. The Federation had to be devoting a lot of resources to tracking Blake down; they’d come too close too many times, when by all rights the _Liberator_ should have been safe in some obscure backwater system....

Anyway, the _Liberator_ didn’t have a real name or Federation ID, or not of the kind to appear in the Central Spacecraft Register. She had presumably been assigned some kind of ID number in the yards where she was built, but given that Orac had just blown the whole place up, it was quite possible that she no longer appeared in any records anywhere.... But under her current fake ID the ship was happily orbiting the planet under the protection of the flight control authorities, whom Jenna had assured Blake were well-known for their ability to turn a blind eye to notorious guests. Jenna would hardly have agreed to leave the _Liberator_ completely un-manned if she’d thought there was any likelihood of having to break orbit in a hurry.

Vila peered optimistically up into the narrow strip of sky visible overhead, and stepped squarely into a large wet patch that had flooded the lightweight shoe he was wearing before he could manage to snatch his foot back onto dry land. He stared down in disgust at the black sludge that soaked his footwear and spattered his trouser-leg. It might have been rain-water once. So much for a city with open sky overhead!

The prospect of re-living his old haunts had suddenly become much less appealing. Vila took a few experimental stumbling steps, screwing his face up in disgust, and found himself opposite a side-alley dimly illuminated by the green and pink glow of the sign that flickered above a heavy metal door a little way down the alley. The sign seemed to be intended to represent three balls spinning through space between the motionless hands of the neon juggler, an impression that was further reinforced by the somewhat crudely-painted lettering on the wall opposite: THE JOLLY JUGGLER. ENTERTAINMENT FOR ALL. Someone else had added in a straggling hand, lower down the wall: NO ALFA GRADES!

Vila slipped a hand into his side-pocket and rattled the credit-chips inside to reassure himself that they were still there. Avon’s lucky streak at cards in the casino had shown no signs of rubbing off on Vila, no matter what he’d tried: but he was flush again now, thanks to a few pockets he’d lifted during his rapid exit from the smart area of town, and the Jolly Juggler looked as if it could be his type of place.... He crossed the street and limped down the alley, whistling tunelessly to warn off any fellow alley-lurkers. A moment’s struggle with the heavy bar on the door ended when it was suddenly opened from the inside by a husky long-haired man in a sleeveless jacket and gold earrings.

The door-keeper blinked at him for a moment. Vila tried to look as obviously non-Alpha as he could, which wasn’t exactly difficult in his current condition. Apparently he passed the test.

“You got any money?” the man asked hoarsely. “No free-loaders in the Juggler.”

Vila thrust out a handful of small change, which earned him a suspicious look. “Twenty credits entrance.” Thick fingers scooped up a pile of plastic. “Drinks are extra.”

For a moment, indignant, Vila considered turning back and trying his luck further down the street. But the big man had somehow got between him and the door, and there was no way out but forwards, down the cramped corridor to the cavernous room he could just about glimpse beyond. And after all, he had already paid.

He emerged at the back of a vast tunnel-like hall that seemed to have been constructed in deliberate imitation of a style best described as Industrial Depressive. Given its location, it was probably a fair bet that the Jolly Juggler had not, in fact, started off in life as a depot for mass-transit transport modules; but whoever had designed the internal decorative scheme had obviously had great faith in the novelty appeal of using sweating raw brickwork to line interior walls and providing chipped concrete beams to run across the entire width of the hall only nine feet or so off the ground.

The current owners of the Juggler had apparently attempted to cheer the place up by twining the massive beams with garlands of coloured metallic foil — which a group of determinedly drunk young men were currently attempting to remove from above, boosting each other up onto the beams with great brays of hilarity — and by providing clusters of floating balloons of the same coloured foil, which bobbed and jostled against the ceiling some twenty feet higher up, sending confusing dapples of light across the floor below as diffused lasers played across them.

Perhaps because of the vast size of the room, it was disconcertingly cold; little warmer than it had been outside, where the temperature was rapidly dropping towards freezing. The dance-floor was almost empty, not entirely surprising given the distorting effect the empty roof-space was having on the complicated rhythms of the Lyxarian shuffle-music that was currently blasting out of the speakers, and most of the patrons were either clustered around what Vila took to be the bar, a sort of purple booth arrangement against the back wall near where he’d come in, or seated in animated groups around the tables set in floor-recesses away to his left, closer to what appeared to be the main entrance. The floor-level tables each boasted what looked like a genuine solid-fuel-fired grill in the centre; no doubt a wonderful gimmick for serving novelty-charred food to jaded restaurant guests but also highly necessary for heating purposes, given the way the breath of the drinkers at the bar seemed to be condensing in clouds around them.

Despite the promise of ‘entertainment for all’, there didn’t seem to be any kind of stage act going on, or even provision for a dice game or two. The place could hardly be described as silent as the grave, given the confused volume of the music echoing around the vaulted interior, but it certainly wouldn’t have scored more than one star on Vila’s extensive personal list of Places of Entertainment Worth Revisiting, assuming that it would ever have featured there at all. No wonder they made their guests pay in advance at the door.

Vila, torn between getting a drink and getting closer to one of those braziers, made a rapid decision, and for once opted firmly in favour of the warmth. The odds were that once he got to the tables he’d be able to get hold of a free drink anyway — it was astonishing how absent-minded people could be — and his wet foot was starting to feel like a block of ice. He might even fork out for some hot food, if he could get hold of a waitress. The hotel rooms Jenna had fixed up in the smart quarter of town were becoming a more and more attractive prospect all the time. Full-width beds; soft furnishings; lively vids on tap....

He was automatically scanning the tables in search of a large and convivial group far enough gone not to notice the presence of one extra, when his eye was caught by one couple sitting alone at a table near the door with untouched glasses in front of them. It wasn’t exactly unusual for a young couple to be more interested in each other than in their drinks... but this pair were just sitting there unmoving on opposite sides of the table, not talking, not touching, not even looking at each other. There was something on the table between them, and they were both watching it with fierce attention.

Finely-tuned evasive instincts screamed at Vila that something was wrong, and he was starting to back away towards the main entrance — the last thing he wanted was to get caught in the crossfire of some gang feud — when the woman raised her head and their eyes met. The shock was mutual.

“Cally!” Numb foot forgotten, Vila almost flung himself down into the seating pit around her table, his face lighting up. “What are you doing in this dump? The same as I am, I suppose — trying to get a bit of fun without Blake looking over your shoulder all the time — although there doesn’t seem to be a lot of fun on offer round here —”

His relieved babble ran down to a halt as he became aware of the pale hostile look being directed at him by the young man on the other side of the table. It wasn’t even a ‘Shut up, Vila’ look of the kind he was used to getting from the rest of the crew: the last person who’d stared at him with that particular blend of contemptuous hostility had been a certain Subcommander Raiker on board the _London_....

//You must be Vila Restal.//

If he hadn’t known better, he might have assumed that was just a stray thought, even if it would have been a pretty stupid one... but with people like Cally around, you learned to tell the difference between what was your thoughts and what was someone else’s. And that could hardly have been Cally— Hang on. Cally hadn’t just slipped off on the quiet the way he had. There’d been that telepathic message about drugs and some Auron scientist —

He stared hard at the lanky young man opposite, ignoring the glower he got in return. Short-cropped coarse black hair, pale blue eyes, rounded cheeks and a pasty complexion — “Cally, he _can’t_ be an Auron!” he burst out without thinking. “He doesn’t look anything like you.”

Cally had been looking back and forward between them with a rather worried expression, but she gave him the glimmer of a smile at that. “Why should he look like me? We are not related. You look nothing like Jenna, Vila —”

“No — worse luck!” He thought about that one for a moment. “I mean... that is, no offence to Jenna, but...”

//Stop talking, Restal, and go away.//

The telepathy was as clear and emotionless as ever, but one glance into the Raiker-eyes told him everything he needed to know.

“Look, it’s nice to be famous and all that, but I don’t think we even know each other —” The unrelenting hostility was starting to get on his nerves. He hadn’t even _done_ anything this time, as far as he knew. No wonder Cally had felt she had to go off solo, if this scientist of hers was going to glower at everybody else like that —

For the third time in as many minutes, Vila’s train of thought came to an abrupt halt. The grey colour had fooled him at first, but the cut of that uniform had looked suspiciously familiar, and now that the man had shifted in his seat, the emblem on the breast of the jacket had suddenly become horribly apparent.

“Cally, he’s Federation!”

He was halfway out of the seating pit, with one foot on the upholstered plastic and one on solid ground, before it occurred to him that Cally couldn’t possibly have failed to notice her companion’s uniform. He looked back at the two doubtfully, and with a strange sinking feeling saw that Cally too was clad in Federation grey. The two of them were exchanging identical hooded Auron-stares, and despite the difference in facial structure they suddenly looked frighteningly alike.

Vila bolted for the exit in sudden blind panic, not allowing himself time to think.

“Vila!” He ignored her.

//Vila, I know what I am doing....//

I’m not listening. Go away. I can’t hear you. I’m not listening, understand? Vila started frantically counting down from a hundred inside his head as he plunged out into the roadway. It had the double advantage of blocking out Cally and stopping him from thinking.


	7. Working with the Enemy

//Let go of me — // Cally snapped her wrist free from Amery’s inexpert hold with enough violence to hurt, and turned his pain back on him through their link, along with all her earlier anger. //I have to go after Vila! You have caused enough harm already — //

//I trusted you to keep Blake and his crew out of this!//

//That was nothing to do with me and nothing to do with Blake — you heard him — // Whatever Amery had said to Vila, the hostility between them had been almost tangible. //What _possessed_ you to alienate him like that? He was off on his own, avoiding Blake — he’d have been glad to help us and he’s just the man we need — //

//Vila Restal is a petty little slum thief, a criminal for the whole of his worthless life — // The response was incredulous. //I’ve had privileged access to the C.S.C. computers and seen the records on all of Blake’s crew. No-one has ever even claimed that Restal was politically motivated. All the evidence goes to show that he was an opportunist who preferred dishonesty to life in the Federation service grades, and Blake’s crusade of terror to the hard labour on a penal colony he so richly deserved. How you can defend a man like that, let alone suggest I might want help from him — //

//Vila is my friend!// Cally sent with stinging force that shook them both. Her mind was racing. Officially, neither Blake nor Vila ever left Cygnus Alpha: so who was it who made a point of showing you those records in order to turn you against Blake? And why?

“There is a human expression: ‘Set a thief to catch a thief’,” she said quietly into the lull which followed. “And it is a thief we are dealing with.”

Surely she could still catch up with Vila, if she were swift? But this was his terrain and not hers; she had learnt to run and hide among hills and jungles, not to slip unnoticed through the slums.

She could feel her companion’s determination wavering; then his attention suddenly snapped back into focus. //Look!// He caught up the detector from the table where it had lain between them, and scrambled up to join her where she had halted, half-poised to skirt the last table-recess on her way to the door. //The tracer is moving again — //

His mind held equally mingled relief and frustration. They had traced the missing biotransit case, as he had called it, to a location somewhere close by, where it had now remained stationary and presumably unguarded for almost the full thirty minutes which Cally had decided that it would be prudent to allow before going in to attempt to retrieve it. Now it seemed they had missed their chance. The detector showed that the tracer signal was on the move again, and far faster than before. Cally frowned, taking the unit into her own hands and resetting the calibration scale. Heads close together, they stared down at the result.

//The container must have been transferred to a vehicle of some kind — but what kind of ground vehicle accelerates at that rate? The velocity reading is approaching Mach 1 and still increasing — //

But Cally’s eyes were on the altitude reading. Experimentally she rotated the detector, then held it upside-down, ignoring Amery’s protests. But there was no change. The reading was still negative.

//Some kind of private air-car?// Amery was guessing wildly. //But what sort of city allows private air traffic within its borders, let alone craft with supersonic ability? And how could we have failed to notice the take-off this close?//

//Look at the relative altitude.// Cally angled the read-out so that he could see. //It is travelling away from us, very fast — and below ground-level.//

Their eyes met. //Subterranean transit pods.//

Cally nodded. //They have a fully working system here — old-fashioned, but still in operation. There must be a terminal close by, and our thief has been calmly sitting in the waiting hall for the last twenty minutes. And now we have lost him. He is out of Blackport altogether by now, and heading for somewhere else on the planet far faster than we can possibly follow.//

//As long as he stays on this continent we can trace him,// Amery insisted, taking back the detector. //Look at the maximum range calibration — //

//I’m sure it would be theoretically possible — but quite apart from the fact that the _Gergovia_ is due to leave in a few hours’ time, it makes no sense for two of us to go chasing across the continent on our own. That is a task for the proper authorities; we have to report the theft now. This is just too big for us. I’m sorry.//

His eyes were lowered. //Commander Chu is going to kill me for this,// he sent with a rueful conviction that made her wince. He glanced back down at their table. //Wait — we’ve left something behind — //

Cally would have been glad enough to dispose of the first-aid kit now that she had finished sealing up her arm wound; but it had been a kind thought of his to bring it, and she had no wish to hurt him, so she accepted the pack he handed up to her with a grave smile, and found a pocket in the borrowed jacket which would hold it.

//At least let’s find out where the Blackport subtrans terminal is,// he appealed once they were out in the street. //It must be somewhere very close.//

//Underground, probably.// Cally looked up and down the dark street, but could see nothing that looked remotely like the entrance to a public transit system, however old-fashioned it might be by Zen’s standards. //We could always ask, I suppose,// she sent with a mental shrug — it seemed a harmless enough request — and turned to lay a polite hand on the arm of the fairly respectable-looking citizen who had just emerged from the Jolly Juggler after them. Slumming, she guessed; he didn’t look as if he belonged in the quarter.

“Could you tell us where the local subtrans terminal is, please?”

He was engaged in pulling his cape closer around him against the cold night air, but at her words he paused and stared at her. “Subtrans?”

Cally wondered what she had said wrong. “Subterranean transit — the underground vacuum system? I thought this planet had one of the earliest —”

“Oh, _tourists_!” He gave a patronising laugh, settling the furred collar of his cape, and Cally had to send a soothing touch of calm to her indignant companion. “You mean the Salter Tube, I think, my dear. Yes, I’ve heard that it’s quite a museum-piece in its own right, these days; but it does very well for us.

“The local Tube station is indeed literally just around the corner — you can see the back wall from here, rather grimy, I’m afraid, but then the backs of public buildings so often are, don’t you find?”

He waved one gloved hand to their right, where there was indeed a long section of black brickwork crowned with what might once have been ornamental figures at irregular intervals along its crest, barely visible in the gloom.

“As it happens, I’m going that way myself. I’d be only too glad to escort you, my dear —” He offered her his arm, smoothing back greying hair with the other hand in what was obviously a habitual gesture.

“Thank you, but my friend and I will manage,” Cally said politely, stepping back to link her arm through Amery’s instead.

The respectable citizen, to her relief, merely moved civilly aside to let them pass. “First right, and right again onto the main street,” he told her. “You really can’t miss it, as they say. Very fine architecturally, I understand; though I must say I myself always found the station rather overblown.”

He glanced down at his chrono. “I’m afraid I think you’ve just missed one. They only run one set of pods at this time of night. Twenty minutes out to Morcan, and twenty minutes back, and so they make it an hourly service, on the hour, Federation Standard Time.”

“Does the Salter Tube only run to Morcan?” Cally asked in puzzled obedience to an urgent telepathic prompt.

“On this line, yes. It’s mostly excursion traffic out to Morcan nowadays, you understand. For travel purposes you will probably need to use the new station, though it’s quite a step from here — that connects into the main continental network. But if it’s just the historic experience you’re after, my dear, you can’t do better than look around the Old Terminus. I’d be delighted to show you —”

Cally smiled at him firmly. “Thank you very much, but no,” she told him, and watched his back recede up the street into the night.

//The thief went to Morcan. But why?//

//Does it matter?// Cally leaned against him wearily. The healed arm was beginning to stiffen; she had waited too long before sealing the cut, and the portable medical kit had not offered her the luxury of a subdural regenerator. Amery was starting to remind her of Blake. His doggedness and passionate opinions were equally wearing.

The next moment she shot upright as she caught his thought. //We are _not_ going to Morcan!//

//Why not? I’ve heard of Morcan — it’s a small town that used to be important back when this planet was first being settled. Now it’s just a famous tourist spot, one of the most isolated on the planet — and yet only twenty minutes away by subtrans. It’s a totally plausible place for a careful thief to hide his takings, and there’s nowhere else for him to go once he gets there. If we take the next subtrans service, that will give him plenty of time to conceal the container and leave again — //

//And be waiting at the subtrans terminal to catch the return service to the one we’re on! He knows your face, remember?// But Cally could feel herself weakening. It was not as if they would be searching a whole continent. She too had heard of Morcan, though only when Jenna had dismissed it as a possible destination, and it did sound like the sort of quiet dead-end town that would offer plenty of opportunity for cacheing valuables — and little danger for those attempting to retrieve them. An hour between subtrans services should give them ample time to track down the missing biomaterial and yet return to Blackport before the _Gergovia_ ’s scheduled take-off — although probably not before Amery was due to return from shore-leave, but he would have to deal with that problem himself....

//If I am recognised, then I’ll rely on you to protect me.// He sent her affectionate bravado. //Come on. It’s worth a try.//

Cally sighed and gave in. //This is the last time,// she warned him. //If this fails, we come straight back and confess. Agreed?//

//It won’t fail!// He looked absurdly young, and she had to smile.

* * *

“Any results, Gan?”

Blake had flung himself down restlessly onto the curved couch at the front of the flight deck, one arm trailing out along the back of the couch, the other pulling unconsciously at the open throat of his shirt as though it were choking him. He had twisted round in an attempt to watch Gan, head tilted back in an exposed position that only emphasised the tension in the straining muscles of his neck. He looked about as relaxed as the containment coils on a nucleic burster, and any minute now Gan expected to see him up and pacing again.

“No new results in the last five minutes,” Gan told him calmly as Blake drew breath to repeat the query. “But I think I’ve located Cally’s teleport bracelet.”

Blake frowned, half-poised to spring to his feet. “I thought we’d tried that.”

“I tried again.” Gan’s matter-of-fact tone gave no hint of the dozens of failed attempts spent wrestling unfamiliar controls with clumsy fingers, until it all began to make a kind of hard-won sense that linked in with what he knew of the controls at his own flight position.

He moved across to make room for Blake as the other man covered the distance between them in a few swift strides. “Here.” Gan underscored the location of the faint green dot on the grid of the auxiliary screen in front of him with the nail of one large finger.

Blake looked up at him. “‘Here’ being where, exactly?”

Gan’s other hand tightened, unseen, around the conduit on the underside of the flight console. He glanced across to his left. “Zen, have we received that street plan yet?”

“CONFIRMED.” Was it his imagination, or was there satisfaction in the emotionless computer voice? “DATA IS NOW AVAILABLE.”

“Right.” Gan dragged the back of one hand across his forehead and turned to Blake. “I put in a request to the Blackport civic authorities for a map of the city, and it sounds as if it’s come through. If we overlay that with the grid location data from the surface scan — “

“Good thinking,” Blake nodded. “Zen, relay auxiliary monitor display to the main screen, and superimpose the Blackport street plan on the same scale where the areas coincide.”

Gan heard an ominous creak from under the console and hastily released the grip that had unconsciously tightened to breaking point. He rubbed the offending hand with tender fingers, feeling the raised weals across his palm. In a moment now they would both know whether that broken transmission he’d picked up was really the dying response of a damaged teleport bracelet, or just an anomaly created by his botched use of the detectors....

“I think you’ve got it, Gan.” Blake’s arm tightened fiercely across his shoulders, and Gan returned the grip, with an equally broad grin. “Down close to the dock zone, just as Cally mentioned. If she were going to run into trouble in Blackport — which is supposed to pride itself on being safe for strangers! — that would be the most likely spot.”

Gan shrugged. “I’m not sure it gets us anywhere,” he pointed out. “You could say that’s the one place we do know where she isn’t.”

“One of us should probably go down anyway.” Blake had paced forward, hands hooked through his belt, and stood directly in front of the main screen, gazing up, as if he thought he could somehow wring out more information from a closer look. “At least we might get some hint as to what happened. Cally’s messages haven’t exactly been informative.”

Gan grinned rather ruefully behind Blake’s back. He had a fair idea which of the two of them would end up being the one who got to go down. Blake hated waiting and fretted endlessly at enforced inactivity. Gan sympathised — he’d been that way once himself — but the realities of life in the Gamma grades had taught him the hard way to control his tongue and his temper, and given him almost endless reserves of restraint. Impatience was an Alpha privilege.

“Suppose we — “ Out of the corner of his eye he saw Blake tense suddenly, and jumped up. “Blake, are you — “

Blake gestured impatiently for silence, tapping his temple with the forefinger of his left hand: telepathy, Gan guessed, though he was surprised Cally could throw a thought far enough to contact the _Liberator_ in orbit. He waited until Blake sighed and turned away from the main screen to sink into a seat at the front of the flight deck. Gan came down to join him, throwing an enquiring glance at the other man as he sat down. “Cally?”

Blake nodded, frowning.

“Anything useful this time?” Gan tried again.

A shrug as Blake met his eyes. “Well, she seems to be all right and she’s keeping in touch as she promised. Apparently they’ve traced the stolen drug package to a town called Morcan out on the coast, and she thinks she’s got one last chance of retrieving it there. If that fails, she’ll be coming back to Blackport via the subtrans system to report the theft officially and presumably to make contact with us, though she doesn’t say so.”

Blake sighed again, thrusting a hand absently behind his head. “I wish I knew why she felt she had to go off on her own — and why she’s still so adamant that she doesn’t want any help from the rest of us. I wonder just what she’s got herself mixed up in. I’m not always sure just how much Cally understands about the seamy side of human society.”

“I’m sure the Auronar are no better than the rest of us,” Gan told him firmly. “They don’t go around just reading each other’s minds all the time, you know. I asked Cally once. They have very strict rules about mental privacy; I suppose it would be like living in the middle of a glass cage, otherwise. I should think they have organised crime like everywhere else.”

“Strange, isn’t it, that the only time our species really seems to manage to co-operate together efficiently is when one part of it is conspiring to kill or defraud the other part?” Blake’s heavy-lidded eyes were thoughtful. “I can’t help being impressed by the sheer organisation of organised crime, you know. If only the various resistance movements could muster that sort of discipline and determination, the Federation would have fallen apart long ago.”

Gan found that his hands had clenched themselves into fists again. He relaxed them deliberately. Sometimes he wondered just how much _Blake_ understood about humanity.

“I don’t think you’d like the methods people like the Terra Nostra use to get their ‘discipline’, Blake. They don’t share your views on freedom and justice for all.” He’d seen the work of the Terra Nostra on Earth, first-hand — never actual crime, only the aftermath, when the weak went under and the strong turned to prey on their neighbours in their turn.

“I’m not condoning their methods,” Blake snapped. “I just wish there was some way to make use of all that mis-directed efficiency —”

“Come in, _Liberator_.” The sound of Jenna’s cool voice cut across the flight deck. “ _Liberator_ , do you hear me?”

Both men were on their feet within seconds, but Blake was closer. “Blake. What is it, Jenna?”

“Vila has just turned up in an agitated state, apparently looking for you.” Her voice was carefully non-committal.

“What’s wrong with him?” There was a pause. Blake frowned. “Jenna, what’s wrong?”

“Have you heard from Cally yet, Blake?” Jenna asked after a second brief pause.

Gan’s hands were gripping each other fiercely. He had sunk back into his seat again, his eyes fixed on Blake as he leaned over the communicator cabinet. An ‘agitated state’, applied to Vila, could describe almost anything from non-stop drunken chatter to cowering terror inspired by certain death, and Jenna’s tone sounded deliberately unhelpful.

“She contacted me a few minutes ago to let me know she was intending to leave the city,” Blake was saying, a certain edge making itself heard in his voice. “Just what are you trying to tell me, Jenna?”

“She didn’t mention anything about the Federation?”

“What exactly is wrong with Vila?” Blake demanded.

There was an audible sigh of resignation. “Vila is suggesting that Cally may be working with the Federation. He seems to be rather upset. I take it Cally hasn’t bothered to inform you that her ‘Auron scientist’ has Federation loyalties?”

“ _Cally_?” Gan couldn’t help himself. “Blake, I don’t believe it for a moment!”

“No,” Blake said slowly into the communicator, looking as stunned as Gan. “She hasn’t explained anything....” He seemed to pull himself together. “Cally’s been captured and tortured by the Federation. She was the only survivor of the plague on Saurian Major. What could they possibly offer her after that?”

Gan could almost hear Jenna shrug at the other end of the comm link. “I’m not claiming anything for certain, Blake, I’m just passing on Vila’s information for what it’s worth. Apparently he saw her in Federation uniform together with this scientist, and the other Auron, at least, seemed actively hostile. Vila jumped to conclusions, and took to his heels, so that’s all we know. I’m suggesting you bear it in mind as an outside possibility, no more.”

“I see. Thank you, Jenna.” Blake passed a weary hand over his eyes. “Where are you, by the way?”

“I’ve just taken Vila back to the hotel. He was in quite a state, so I got him to go up to his room and lie down. There didn’t seem much point in locking the door on him, so I slipped him a sedative that should keep him quiet until morning. I’ll be turning in myself some time within the next hour. I take it you two aren’t planning to use your hotel rooms at all?”

Blake glanced over at Gan, who shook his head. Right now he wasn’t sure he could even face the confines of his _Liberator_ bunk, let alone relax in luxury in the daunting splendour that was Blackport’s — and Jenna’s — idea of a hotel.

“I’m afraid not,” Blake told her. “What you’ve just told us makes tracking down Cally all the more urgent. I’m sorry — I know you went to a lot of trouble — “

“It doesn’t matter.” Jenna’s voice softened a little. “Blake — if it turns out there really is something wrong — I’m ready to come back up at any time, you know that.”

“It won’t come to that,” Blake reassured her. “Enjoy what’s left of your evening, Jenna. _Liberator_ out.”

“I don’t believe it,” Gan said again as soon as Blake had closed the communicator channel. “Whatever the answer is, Cally wouldn’t betray us.”

Blake shook his head. “Nobody believes that — except possibly Vila. If she wanted to betray us, she wouldn’t be telling us to keep away.... But if she’s really trying to work with the Federation, she’s playing a dangerous game. I wish we could just get in contact with her —” He broke off. “I want to shift the _Liberator_ ’s orbit until we’re directly over Morcan so that we can use the short-range ground sensors. Gan, get in touch with planetary flight control and request a new orbit. We may as well do this by the book for once since we’re technically in Federation space — I don’t know if Blackport’s toleration of notorious guests extends to cover minor traffic offences.”


	8. Salter Tube

Cally slid neatly into her allotted seat near the centre of the pod. Salter, if that was the name of the designer, had obviously intended his rapid transit system principally for the transport of large volumes of goods in tight-packed pods — probably fish, she guessed. Half-heard information reeled off by Zen was starting to come back to her in little irrelevant snippets.

She did not normally pay much attention to the history of the planets they visited; nor did the others, but this planet had been settled longer than most of the Known Worlds, long enough actually to have a history, and someone — Vila, she thought — had asked Zen for a full recital of local data, though she doubted that history was what he had hoped to hear. It had been during her watch, and the main viewscreen had been playing up again — there was a certain tiny spot in the top left-hand corner which insisted on blinking white at irregular but annoying intervals, and nothing either she or Avon could do had so far managed to cure the problem for more than a month or so at a time. Avon, of course, was convinced that it was a computer problem, the manifestation of unstable polarity in the sub-logical linkage to Zen’s main matrix. Cally had a hunch that it was no more than a simple, albeit elusive, electro-magnetic fault, and on that day, two days ago now, ship’s time, she had been trying to prove it and had spent most of her watch with Zen keeping an eye on the automatics while she had her head buried in one access hatch after another; so she had been listening with only half an ear, if that. Apparently she had picked up more history than she had realised at the time — almost certainly more than Vila had.

Yes, Morcan had been a major industrial fishing town once, back in the early days of the Federation, and they must have built that one early subtrans route to move their highly perishable cargo as quickly as possible to Blackport, the planetary capital and even in those days an important trading port and staging-post for ships travelling through the inner sectors. It would have been cheaper than large-scale stasis transfer — but even so, given the primitive technology of the first century of interstellar flight, the trade must have been immensely profitable to warrant such an enormous investment. And now it was all gone, fish and industry both; nothing left but a quiet dead-end town called Morcan, and some spectacular scenery that gullible humans would travel to the edge of the continent to admire — Cally smiled rather sadly — and the antiquated Salter Tube that carried nothing but tourists and ran out of a ridiculously grandiose terminal only too obviously designed to handle large volumes of freight, not passengers, in the days when that freight had been the lifeblood of this planet and hence worth architectural celebration. In a way, it summed up the whole story of this tawdry place.

The legacy of that was that passengers were treated like freight, even now, packed into the pod almost head-and-toe on four levels. The seats were staggered so that the head and shoulders of a traveller on the lower levels fitted neatly into the recess behind the bent knees of the passenger seated on the level immediately above. It was an effective use of space, but it completely ruled out any possibility of standing up, or even stretching your legs, during the journey. It also meant that the entire twenty minutes of the journey would be spent staring at the silver-scratched grey paintwork coating the underside of the footwell of the passenger above, barely twelve inches in front of your face. Cally could understand why all passengers were issued with headphones and wrap-around vidglasses, whether they had requested them or not. She also finally understood why the attendant in the waiting hall had placed such importance in explaining to Amery the meaning of ‘claustrophobia’, and on discovering whether either of them suffered from such a disorder.

No wonder Zen’s emotionless summary had described this system as ‘antiquated’.... She gave another Cally-smile and leaned back, slipping on the vidglasses and squinting until the auto-focus adjusted to her eyes. Even after so few minutes, it was a relief to be able to focus on something more than a few inches away from her face. The default programme appeared to be a cliff-top view out over a rolling grey ocean, deliberately chosen to provide the sensation of maximum distance in front of the viewer, she guessed, but the steady beat of the surf chimed nicely with the cross-rhythms of the Lyxarian ‘Contro’ music flow she requested from the headphones.

As the passionless mutoid-voice of the recorded announcer droned a warning that acceleration to supersonic speeds was about to begin and that travellers should not be concerned at the apparent absence of turbulence, she reached out with her mind to Amery, seated some seven rows back on the other side of the left-hand aisle. Claustrophobia was only experienced by those imprisoned within their own minds. It was not surprising that the very concept had fallen into disuse on Auron.

//There is a woman opposite who keeps urging me to cover my eyes with vidglasses.// Rather plaintive puzzlement. //She seems to think that I will suffer some kind of distress if I do not.//

//Do as she says,// Cally advised firmly. //It saves explanation; besides, the views are worth seeing.// And, if she knew her humans, the spectacle of Amery calmly contemplating a blank wall for twenty minutes would be far more distressing for the unfortunate woman witnessing or imagining it than it would be for him.

She amused herself flicking through the views on her own headset as the pod’s acceleration became apparent as an almost imperceptible throbbing around them, trying to guess which views he was currently looking at from the reactions she was picking up. He still seemed amazed by the ease with which the two off-worlders, not even human, had managed to obtain the purely nominal travel permits allowing them to undertake this long journey across the planet without even showing proof of identity or residence registration.

//What did you expect?// she sent at last, a little nettled. //Exit visas for each city? Evidence of intent to seek work at the end destination, on a planet that depends on tourists to survive? Is that the sort of bureaucratic nightmare you want the Federation to introduce on Auron?//

//No, of course not!// He reflected her own anger back at her, as if she were a naughty child, forcing her to calm. //But in the Central Science Complex every _door_ is security-coded, and there are whole sectors closed off to everyone save those of us who work there, both for security and for containment in case of contamination. After six months of that it becomes second instinct, I suppose. And on Auron no-one can conceal his identity if challenged; but humans seem to lie about themselves as easily as they lie about everything else....//

She picked up more puzzlement than resentment and smiled a little ruefully, remembering her own reaction when that particular bewildering human habit had become apparent. The concept itself of a non-telepathic lie was easy enough to understand, and even to attempt oneself; but it had taken considerable bitterly-won experience before she had realised on a gut level that _any_ statement made by a human had to be considered as a possible untruth. A telepathic lie was a mind-numbing impossibility.

//I don’t like the level of bureaucracy in the Federation either,// he offered her at last, almost shyly. //It’s one of the things we need to change. It’s just that we have to be on the inside first, before we have any influence. I’m not blind, I’m not pretending the Federation is perfect. But it’s better than anarchy, and starvation, and ignorance. The future belongs to the Federation, and we need to be part of that future — //

//You keep saying that.// Cally was growing tired of constantly being lectured about the Federation. //I don’t believe the Federation will inevitably rule all humanity, and I don’t believe it is benevolent. All I have ever seen of the Federation is its brutal response to the faintest trace of opposition — response out of all proportion to the crime.//

She pulled off the vidglasses, her hands clenched around them in her lap as old images replayed themselves behind her closed eyes. Deliberately, she channelled the pain of those memories into the link.

//I told you that I found friends among humans. I found them on Saurian Major, the last of the people who were born there, those who refused to leave their homeworld even at gunpoint; and they all died. They were no more than vermin to the Federation, and they died under my hands like poisoned rats as the plague swept through the camp, a plague deliberately seeded on us, engineered to kill the natives and spare off-worlders — //

//You are wrong — you must be wrong — // Conviction thrust against her; bewildered confidence. //Listen, I would _know_ — this is my field, I’ve been working on Federation plague research for six months, I’ve been in contact with people who’ve been on the Soteros project for twelve years — //

His thoughts broke off and trailed into frustration. //I am sorry that your friends died; but armies living rough in the field have been devastated by epidemics for thousands of years without any enemy intervention. It was almost certainly some local water-borne pathogen, sufficiently environment-dependent for you to have a natural immunity.... The Federation has been devoting enormous resources to the Soteros project for years in an attempt to find a way to cure viral plagues, and over the last few months, with the aid of Auron medical knowledge on genetic techniques, we’ve finally made the breakthrough to the first successful engineered anti-virus. Whatever your revolutionary friends claim — // a touch of professional indignation — //the Central Science disease laboratories don’t create new diseases; we study and try to eradicate the thousands of viral conditions still without a cure. If the Soteros project works, _lerva_ -plague will be only the beginning — we can re-engineer the anti-virus to target any of the killer diseases — //

Cally had become caught up in his excitement, and the bitter wash of reality broke equally over both of them: //Of course, if I can’t get these samples back, I’m unlikely to be part of the project in the future.//

//What exactly are we looking for?// Cally took refuge in firm practicalities. //What does one of these biotransit cases look like? Show me.//

She caught the image of a sturdy insulated white-and-green box with a flush-locking lid and recessed hand-grip, obviously designed to stack in bulk. Heavy and unwieldy enough to be awkward for one man to handle alone, it was intended to provide a secure environment for the living organisms within rather than to be handled easily. //That should be easy to spot!// she sent, rather surprised. //A pity we couldn’t question the attendants at the Blackport terminal — but if the tracer is working, that won’t matter. What does the detector read now?//

Annoyance. //I had to deactivate it. They claimed it was interfering in some way with the operation of the Tube.//

Cally sighed. //In any case there is nothing we can do until we arrive. Try to relax. It is a short journey, and nearly over.//

She slid the discarded vidglasses back over her eyes and flicked them over to a bright abstract display that matched the vibrant electronic medley she deliberately requested from her headphones in an attempt to distract herself from the various worries that were teasing at her. She was very conscious that time was running out. Whatever happened, whether this wild quest of his succeeded or not, Amery’s ship would be taking off from Blackport in a few short hours, and he would be gone, and her last link with Auron gone with him. She could manage on her own — she hoped that he could — but it was almost frightening how quickly she had slipped back into the old habits, of fluent mindspeech, of reaching out casually just to touch and acknowledge another mind, to know that there was someone else there. She hoped that it would not be too hard to un-learn them all again, back in the yawning telepathic emptiness....

She had her place on the _Liberator_ , when this confused brief night was over; though the explanations that were by now owing there were another of her worries. And with every hour that she remained out of contact, the amount of explanation needed became correspondingly more daunting. If she had been able to talk to Vila — if only Amery had not been so insistent that Blake and his crew should not be involved —

Which led to the most insidious worries, the ones she sought to shut out even from herself. What if Amery, inconceivably, were right? If what Blake was trying to achieve was as futile and destructive as Amery perceived it so clearly to be? She could grasp, faintly, the potential for good the other saw in the threatening monolith of the Federation; but she could not equate it with the Federation as it currently existed, as she had experienced it.

From unity comes strength; it was an ancient proverb on Auron, a simple truth among telepaths, though also the justification for her own exile. But the Federation, in taking for its motto ‘From Strength to Unity’, had made a mockery of that most fundamental precept. Whatever the benefits of alliance or co-operation, union imposed by force was not worth having.

Amery was wrong. But what if Blake were _also_ wrong? Was freedom imposed by force any more valid than the false community of purpose of which Amery dreamed?

Sensing her turmoil, but not its reasons, he was offering her silent support and comfort. It took all the discipline she had not to thrust him away, and retreat into her own certainties. But that would have been unnecessary cruelty to one who was already horribly vulnerable.... Cally concentrated hard on the music, allowing him to calm her, schooling herself to face the end of the journey with a tranquil mind. It was cool experience that would be needed in Morcan, not tarnished ideals.


	9. Waiting

The short-range ground sensors showed nothing; or, rather, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that gave the slightest clue as to where Cally might be — if she were there at all — let alone what she might be doing. No doubt the whole life of the little town a thousand spacials below was laid out somewhere in that mass of data, available to be analysed and painstakingly worked out in reverse — if you happened to be a genius with unlimited computing power and a passion for trivia.

A brief smile came to Gan’s face: that sounded remarkably like a description of Orac. He glanced over at the little computer — he couldn’t help remembering Vila’s ‘junkheap’ description — wondering if Orac would really be able to analyse the complete data input and identify the life-readings and current activity of every man, woman and child in Morcan, including Cally. The computer was ridiculously small compared to the gleaming grey banks he’d glimpsed back home on Earth, let alone compared to the intricate circuitry of the System-built computer Zen that branched and spread through the whole ship, the living heart of the _Liberator._ But Orac had completely taken over Zen, even though they’d been in orbit and Orac had been down on the planet Aristo — he didn’t remember a lot about that particular planetfall, he’d been feeling too ill by that time, but he did recall that part all too clearly — and later on it had taken over another System ship in Spaceworld; Blake reckoned it had wormed its way into the brain that had been controlling the whole giant space station and taken _that_ over too. Orac might look like a mad scientist’s pet experiment — and by all accounts it was basically just that — but it worked, and worked frighteningly well.

On second thoughts, perhaps he wouldn’t put the problem to Orac after all. For one thing, they had already discovered that its fascination with the scientific trivia of the universe was extended only grudgingly to human affairs; and for another, Orac had caused quite enough trouble recently. Even if it had, in the end, been responsible for getting them out of trouble again.

Like Blake.... Another rueful smile, as Gan’s eyes fell on the quiet figure of his leader, dark head pillowed on one arm where he had fallen suddenly but utterly asleep as he sat, almost ten minutes ago. Gan had made no move to wake him. It was peaceful on the flight deck with Blake at rest for once.

Blake had run them into trouble, often enough. But so far at least, he’d always found someone to get them out again. ‘Blake’s luck’, Vila had begun to call it: the knack of pulling off the impossible, or at least the part of it which affected those who followed him.

Blake stirred in his sleep, his trailing left hand brushing against the empty drink-cup set down absently on the seat beside him. The slack fingers dragged at the plastic for a moment, then slipped free, leaving the heavy cup to roll softly and inevitably on its circular path to the floor. Gan sighed, and moved quietly to rescue it before the spilt dregs could make matters any worse. He paused for a moment before setting the empty cup on the table safely out of harm’s way, looking down at the sleeping man before him with the expression of faint bewilderment that so often came over his face, though he did not know it, when he actually paused to think about Blake.

In so many ways, Blake was a typical Alpha, like the overseers he’d known on Earth; confident, arrogant, high-handed, automatically assuming control. He bullied Vila as if almost unaware of the smaller man’s resentment and seemed genuinely surprised when even Jenna or Avon chose to challenge his authority. Alphas were bred to be leaders, even when most of them would never amount to more than petty bosses ruling a few bored clerks. And whatever his politics might have taught him to believe, Blake was Alpha to the bone.

In the Federation, in Gan’s old law-abiding life, the grade you were born into and the work-shift you were allocated as an adult defined your whole existence, from the initial training you received down to the shift canteen you used and your clothing allocation. But with a top-heavy crew of three Alpha-grades out of six — quite apart from the fact that Cally wasn’t even human, let alone grade-born — it would have been impossible to keep up normal grade distinctions on board the _Liberator_ even if Blake had wanted to; and Gan was quite certain that it would never even have occurred to him, in any case, to try. After all, that was the sort of thing they were supposed to be campaigning against... but it wasn’t just the politics.

Blake was deeply, confusingly non-Alpha in ways that Gan couldn’t even pretend to make sense of — and he was pretty sure that even Avon, for all the brains he claimed, found them just as puzzling. Alphas just didn’t care about people in the way that Blake seemed to, not on a gut level, not people in general, people they didn’t even know.

Blake had just spent nearly two hours down on the planet’s surface, outside the subtrans terminal in Morcan. It wasn’t a cosmopolitan town like Blackport, and without the constant trickle of ship-crews on shore leave at all hours of the day and night there was no night-life to speak of. It was after midnight, local time, and the town had been dark and almost deserted. Blake had ended up dividing his time between pacing up and down the street in an attempt to avoid going totally numb and sheltering in a doorway to try to shield himself from the biting wind that blew down from the hills.

During that time he had seen a handful of people going into the terminal, but no-one coming out. Eventually he’d gone in himself, carefully casual, to enquire. Yes, the hourly pod service had arrived from Blackport on schedule, and had left again also on schedule, and the next service would be arriving soon; and would sir please use the exit, which was located on the other side of the terminal, and not go out the way he had come in, which was the entrance and clearly labelled as such, _if_ he would be so kind.... The exit had proved to be a long grey tunnel that led Blake to a handsome portal near the top of a steep street of shuttered buildings, with a view out over the blackness of the bay below; but if Cally had ever been there then she had left almost an hour earlier, and her trail was long since cold. It had been obviously hopeless.

When Blake had finally let Gan bring him up, he had been chilled to the marrow despite his heavy parka — a thermal suit was not an option for hanging around street-corners on a civilised planet, or not if you were trying to watch without attracting attention — with hands so stiff with cold inside their gloves that he had barely been able to wrap them both around the hot drink-cup to lift it to his mouth without spilling. With nothing to show for any of it, as Blake had said with a weary self-mocking grimace.

But Gan had known other Alphas on Earth who would have done the same thing on Blake’s place. Cally belonged, she was part of the _Liberator_ ’s crew; they’d been through a lot together, depended on each other, cared for each other in their various ways. Jenna would have done the same, if pushed — had gone back under fire, by her own account, to pull out one of her old crew from an ambush that had gone wrong in the days when she’d been running her own craft, free-trading her way around the Inner Worlds. And Avon — Avon was no more a typical Alpha than Vila was a typical Delta, perhaps one reason why they got on so well together in their casually insulting way — but Gan thought that Avon would have gone down after Cally. In his own way, for his own hidden reasons — better not to ask why — but he would have gone, if the responsibility had been his.

What none of them would have done, not Jenna or Avon and not the Alpha-grades he’d known on Earth — the ones he’d liked and respected, the ones with the brains and sense of responsibility to match their grade classification — was to defy the Administration for the sake of complete strangers, people they had never met, people they would never know even if all went well. That was just life, in the Federation. You kept your head down, worked your shift, did nothing above all to attract attention to yourself.

Gan could dimly remember the days of the Freedom Party — he might even have heard of Blake, though he wasn’t sure any more if that was just hindsight. There had been a couple of girls in Engineering who had claimed to be party members. He’d told them they were crazy. The system was bad, but it worked in its fashion. Follow the rules, think approved thoughts, and you could live well enough.

Gan had been a good docile Federation citizen all his life — until the Federation took his woman. Not out of malice, nothing personal against either of them; just a party of drunken troopers out for sport and a pretty Gamma girl on her own for a few moments. If he had been with her, it wouldn’t have happened. Pure, simple and true. Even drunks didn’t mess with a man the size of Olag Gan.

He’d never used his size to kill before. Never had to — he’d made a name for himself, of a sort, in various brawls, and the show of a doubled fist had usually been enough to face down any casual challenger. But they’d been going home that day, him and her together, and he’d met a friend, stayed for a moment’s chat while she went on ahead; and then he’d heard her scream his name and started to run. He didn’t know what had happened, exactly. Never would, now. They hadn’t even mentioned her, at his trial — they’d made it out to be political murder, unprovoked assault on a man in Federation service.

When he got to the corner he’d seen her lying there, the trooper bending over her trying to haul her up again, just sober enough to begin to realise what he’d done, still drunk enough to find it funny. That was the image burnt into his memory — the man’s stupid half-guilty grin. Beyond that, he didn’t remember much. Didn’t even remember the killing; only the moments afterwards when they’d been pulling him off, a whole squad of them, and all he’d wanted was to go to her. He’d known she was hurt, badly. Hadn’t known she was dead. He wouldn’t have let them take him if he’d known she was dead. They would have had to kill him, too.

There was wetness on his fingers. Gan looked down, puzzled, at the white shards of the broken cup clenched in his fist, and then at the mingled blood and dregs that ran sluggishly down over his hand. Blake was stirring — he must have heard the sound of the splintering plastic — and murmuring something blurred about switching the power off, which meant nothing to Gan.

But the familiar voice brought him back to the present. The flight deck of the _Liberator_ , Sectors away from Earth. More than a year now — nearly two — since she had died, and the man who killed her. His first act of rebellion. And his last, if it hadn’t been for Blake. Who had hardly known him, but had come back to Cygnus Alpha all the same.

Gan owed nothing to the Federation now; and everything to Blake. Who hadn’t waited, like Gan, until injustice touched _him_ — hadn’t looked the other way when others suffered, until there was no-one to care when it was his turn — but had tried to do something about it, Alpha or no Alpha; and had lost his friends, his family, everything he’d believed in, years out of his life, lost Earth itself and his own good name. Hadn’t given up, hadn’t let the other prisoners give up. And had come back.

Blake would always come back — even if it got him killed one day. Stubborn, crazy, strong-willed, single-minded, he drove them all round the bend. Sometimes he was just plain wrong. But he cared — cared for the people he knew, cared for the people he didn’t know. Avon openly despised that, calling it weakness that put them all in danger. What were the rebels on Insecution to Blake? What good would it do his Cause to save them? But Blake meant to try, and Gan would follow him — not blindly, never blindly — but doggedly loyal.

Blake was definitely waking now, squinting up in a slightly puzzled fashion at Gan standing over him. Gan hastily stooped to wipe up the drips from his wounded hand with a corner of his tunic. He glanced over for the flight deck first-aid kit, thought better of it, and moved quietly to the exit, cradling the broken cup and a throbbing palm, the one destined for the recycler and the other for the medical unit.

f f

“Gan? Gan, respond.”

Even over the medical unit intercom, there was an edge of excitement in Blake’s voice. Instinctively, Gan glanced out of the viewport. But this hull sector faced away from the planet, and there was nothing visible but stars, and the false daystar shimmer of a couple of ships in neighbouring orbits, interstellar vessels like their own with no planetary landing capability.

Gan flexed his fingers one more time, automatically checking the tendons for damage, and laid down the sealant unit he’d been using before crossing to the intercom. “Gan. What is it?”

“I’ve picked up a security alert on one of the civilian channels. It’s some kind of trip-beam system — intruders break the beam and a silent alarm signal goes out to Security HQ back in the centre of town. I think it could be Cally.”

“More likely to be some careless thief?” Gan was cautious, not wanting to hope too soon.

“The signal originates from an unpopulated area to the west of the town, apparently at the entrance to an extensive cave system. It could be the perfect place for some smugglers’ hideout — and if Cally isn’t aware of the surveillance...”

“She could have the whole gang after her by now!” Gan’s pulse was suddenly racing. Caves could be a trap —

“I don’t think so.” Blake sounded cautiously optimistic. “The alarm would be ringing inside the caves, not in the police office back in town — unless the police are in on the whole operation, which is possible I suppose. But if we assume that whoever is coming has to come in from the town, then teleporting down right now will give us a minimum of ten minutes’ start. If it is Cally, I want to get in and at least warn her before they arrive.”

For a moment, Gan had a crazy urge to tell Blake to wait, that he’d go down instead. But it was the knowledge of the limiter that stopped him, as always. It wasn’t that he wanted to kill. It was just that he couldn’t go down on his own, because his inability to kill, even if he had to, could cost them all dearly. The limiter had almost got both him and Jenna killed, once. He didn’t want it to do the same for Cally.

He should have gone down last time, to try to find Cally at the subtrans terminal, where there was no danger and no need for killing. Then at least Blake would have been fresh and alert, now when he was needed.... But Blake had been insistent, as always, and Gan had shrugged and let him go. He closed his eyes briefly. When he reopened them his face was as composed and steady as ever.

“I’ll meet you at the teleport,” he told Blake calmly. “If you go too far underground I may have trouble bringing you up again.”

“We’ll worry about that if it happens.” He could hear Blake’s smile. “I’ll take a couple of spare bracelets just in case. Be ready to bring up some extra guests. Blake out.”

Gan frowned at the unresponding intercom, sighed, and turned to leave. It might be an idea to have a gun ready at the teleport console, to cover any unexpected ‘guests’. They couldn’t know that he’d never be able to fire it.... Unless Cally had talked, of course. He hastily banished that thought.


	10. Fantasy Cavern Tour

The notice caught Cally’s attention as they turned the corner at the foot of the first hill down from the terminal in Morcan. From the brief glimpse she had seen of it so far, even in the dark the town appeared to be all hill, a cluster of closely-huddled buildings that straggled down the slope towards the invisible sea below. It did not seem to be a lively place; not at this time of night at least. The small crowd of fellow passengers on the Tube who had emerged from the exit portal had already d1ispersed without a trace, swallowed up in their ones and twos by the dark streets and blank-faced buildings all around.

The notice was blue-shadowed white against the sombre grey of the walls, and it had been placed opposite one of the occasional public wall-lights that provided minimal street illumination. The lettering on it was large and brightly-coloured, and vaguely irregular in some way, almost as if it had been drawn on by hand. Curious, Cally paused for a closer look. The wording was as fancy as the script.

“SEE MORCAN'S PEARL BEYOND PRICE!  
VISIT THE SHINING GROTTOES OF WONDER WITH HARMAL'S FANTASY TOUR.  
TOUR LEAVES HERE EVERY 40 MINUTES (PRICE 30 CREDITS PER HEAD)  
OR ENJOY A CHARMING RUSTIC STROLL ACROSS MEADOW AND CLIFF-TOP TO JOIN THE TOUR AT THE MAIN ENTRANCE (PRICE 15 CREDITS)”

A large arrow painted at the end of the last line pointed intending walkers out along a rutted track just visible between the two buildings opposite, and it was at this that Cally was looking thoughtfully.

//What is it?// Amery, tired of waiting for her to catch up, had come back to join her. He stared at the notice somewhat blankly. //What does it mean?//

//There are caves....// Cally translated briefly, preoccupied. //May I see the detector again?//

The tracer signal had not moved since they had arrived in Morcan — Cally had no intention of waiting another half-hour, she guessed that by the time of their belated arrival the thief would already have been long gone — and its location registered at a point a long way below them, probably almost at sea-level, and some way out to the west. Cally looked out along the track again. As if to guide her, the clouds above them parted to reveal a large single moon, and by its light she could just make out the swell of the land up to the western cliffs, all set out in moon-grey, and the vast expanse of silver-flecked black sea opening out beyond. For a moment, visualising the scene by daylight, she could almost understand why the humans paid to come here just to look....

//That track will take us to the caves,// she sent. //And I am sure that these caves must be the hiding-place we are looking for. We are already on the edge of the town and there is still a long way to go. There is nothing else out there — it seems to be wild country as far as I can see, with the land rising rather than falling. Either the container has been left close to the shore, or else it is somewhere underneath the cliffs; in other words, in the caves.//

//But people are taken to _visit_ these caves!// He was still puzzling over the notice. //Surely that would be a very public hiding-place?//

//I am sure there are many parts of the cave system which the visitors never see... and in any case they will be watching the tour guides, not searching for hidden treasure. No doubt the locals used the caves for storage long before the visitors came....// She was impatient to be gone now that they had an objective, but he resisted her urging.

//You want us to go on foot across wild country? Without lights?//

//Unless you want to wait for the first tour tomorrow morning — or go back to the _Gergovia_ for a hand-lamp — we have very little choice. This is not like night at home; this planet has a moon which will give us enough light to see.//

It had clouded over again, but the swift-moving clouds overhead were breaking up even as she watched, and the moon would soon be visible. She felt a sudden desire to be out under that eerie alien radiance, to escape from the dim blue flicker in which they stood under the public wall-light and experience a whole landscape flooded by the reflected light of the giant satellite that hung so close overhead. Moons were common on other planets, she knew, but after the normality of life on moonless Auron the knowledge of a natural satellite close enough to see was still exciting — and even by alien standards this moon was large enough to be dramatic compared, say, to the viscasts she’d seen of the famous three ‘dainty moons’ of Gardenos.

With the detector aimed level in one hand she walked out between the last buildings onto the worn track made by some kind of wheeled vehicle, aware of Amery following reluctantly behind. The light was strange, like the wavery gleam of a lamp-beam glancing back from a mirror, but her eyes adjusted swiftly and she could see. Shadows were black and uniform, holding hidden traps; after the first few stumbles on rocks that had seemed no more substantial than a tuft of grass, she learned to keep to the track. The grass was not the inviting close-cropped carpet it appeared to be, but a tangle of coarse blades laced with low thorny growths and many hidden stones.

She felt Amery come up beside her and accepted gratefully both the mutual physical support and the wordless mental company he offered. By day this might be a charming rustic stroll, but by moonlight it was a lonely trek across uneven ground in uncertain light. Twice the moon went in, and they were forced to wait in almost total darkness before the cloud passed over and their path was again visible, a dark winding road in a sea of grey. The softly-glowing readings on the hand-detector steadily decreased, and when at last she glanced back she found that Morcan had diminished behind them to no more than a dark shadow in the cleft of the hills, showing only a few scattered lights in evidence of any human habitation.

Amery was leaning on her as much as she on him by the time they reached the crest of the slope, and limping again, the rough going proving too taxing for the damaged knee healed only quickly and inexpertly back at the ship. Cally’s own limbs were aching, more from the strain of the uncertain footing than from the climb, and she was glad to pause for a moment on the cliff-top while she looked round for the buildings that must surely mark the Main Entrance to the Grottoes of Wonder, even if they proved to be no more than a booth from which to collect the entrance money.

//According to the detector,// Amery was telling her, //the trace is somewhere almost directly below us.// He urged her a few steps closer to the edge of the cliff, which fell away in a cascade of steep slopes and ledges down to the rocks far below on which the sea was breaking, but to her relief the readings confirmed that the missing biotransit container was located further inland, and therefore safely underground. A climb down the unstable cliff-face by night would have been beyond the abilities of either of them.

//We need to go this way — // She had finally glimpsed the buildings she sought, down the slope ahead of them, where the cliffs began to fall away again down into the next bay. Moonlight lay slick and incongruous over the oil-smooth grey ceramic skins of a cluster of the half-domed huts that seemed to pass for standard industrial construction on this world. Swirls of bleached colour bore witness to an attempt to create more of a holiday mood. Cally guessed that the same hand — Harmal’s, perhaps? — had been responsible for the eye-catching notice which had first drawn her attention.

The huts were not even locked. A moment’s cautious investigation brought the lighting system to life, and the first building Cally tried proved to contain the simple caving equipment she had counted on finding here. The battered protective helmets, overshoes and belt-lights had evidently been fitted to countless hundreds of careless visitors already, but their very lack of value meant that they had been left out here unprotected. A locked compartment at the back might have contained superior equipment for the guides’ own use, or the day’s takings in cash, or even a stock of souvenirs for vending purposes. After one brief glance at the lock she decided against attempting to open it. Apart from anything else, her companion’s moral discomfort was already niggling at the back of her mind.

//We are only borrowing the equipment, just as the tourists do,// she told him, capable hands tightening the belt firmly around him. //We will be returning it on the way back. In any case we have no choice — unless you really want to go underground without any form of light?//

She caught a half-formed wistful idea from him that the journey back across the cliff-top might be a great deal easier if they kept a belt-light apiece to guide them, and suppressed a rueful smile. //If the moonlight goes before we come back up, we may have to do just that — but I’d rather not. We’ll see.//

Lights were essential. The waterproof overshoes, she decided, would serve no purpose, since they both had well-fitting boots, and might prove a positive danger if there was any kind of climbing to be done. She wavered over the necessity for headgear for a moment, but after experimentally cramming her curls into an ill-fitting helmet she came to the conclusion that any protection offered was probably purely psychological, and returned the shabby monstrosity to its peg with relief.

//Whatever are you doing?// She had turned to find Amery apparently filling a pocket with sand from the greyish drifts that had collected in random corners, perhaps brought in by visitors or else driven in by the constant wind.

Amusement, a little shame-faced, in reply. //Do you remember the story of Calantha, who found her way through the Elder Caves with the aid of a bag-ful of sand? I did find a map — // he showed her a brightly-coloured and rather dog-eared folded sheet, showing such enticing locations as ‘The Chamber of Bells’ and ‘The Grotto of the Seven Veils’ — //but I thought we might well need to leave the tourist route and mark the way we had taken — //

//Good thinking!// She sent a wash of instinctive approval — it would never have occurred to her to have applied the old story of resourceful Calantha to their present situation — and was rather taken aback by the strength of the shy pleasure she received in response. Her surprised reaction leaked through to him, and he flushed hotly, turning aside, until Cally took him firmly by the arm and steered him out of the building. Hurt feelings or not, they had a task to do....

* * *

The caves were unexpectedly steep and the main passage surprisingly narrow. If it had not been for the helpfully provided handrail and the notices at intervals along the wall, Cally might have doubted that the dark crack running backwards and down into the cliffs was the official entrance at all. The swinging beams of their belt-lights revealed nothing more wondrous than green stains of moss and other surface growth alien to this sterile, mineral world, surviving somehow in the few hours of light gleaned from the visitors’ presence, and a handful of names scratched into the soft rock of the sloping walls by those who had managed to evade the guides’ vigilance. She tried to imagine scrambling down the uneven rock stairs while carrying the awkward bulk of an insulated container such as the one Amery had pictured for her, and wondered if they were on the right trail at all.

The cavern opened out in front of her almost unnoticed. With her attention focused on finding secure footing, it was a few seconds before Cally registered the blackness at the corner of her eye, where the edge of the light-beam had been flickering along shadowy walls that no longer enclosed her. Instinctively, she glanced up, the light darting out across the cave as she straightened, and gasped. One hand fumbled with the controls of her belt-light, broadening and diffusing the beam until the whole wall opposite was revealed, as Amery, beside her, played his light along the walls and up into the dripping darkness where further cascades of frozen pure white stone hung like silken marble from the vault above. Unconsciously Cally’s other hand reached out for his, grasping for warm reality. She turned slowly until the diffused beam could no longer reach to the far side of the cavern, watching the intricate folded sheets of glistening white flowstone swim out of the darkness like the ghosts of dead draperies around the sarcophagus of an ancient burial. Her mind beat with incredulous questions she could not even verbalise.

Amery’s light caught and held on a low notice at their feet as if in answer. “Grotto of the Seven Veils....” she read, trying to translate the concept for her young compatriot, whose vocabulary of human images seemed to range more to the technical than the poetic. Her voice echoed unpleasantly up in the sloping roof for a moment before the silence fell again, save for the constant cave-sounds of water trickling and an undersurge of breaking waves from somewhere below.

Why ‘seven’? she wondered briefly. There were far more than seven of the eerie frozen curtains to be seen, even at a glance. ‘Seven Veils’ must be one more of those human cultural references that Blake and Avon were so fond of flinging at each other; her lack of understanding had distressed her at first, but in the end it had dawned on her that most of the time the other human members of the crew had no more idea of what the two of them were alluding to than she did.

She shivered inwardly, grateful for the hand that tightened around hers in response. Her own name for the cavern would have been something more akin to ‘Ghost Grave’ or ‘Cavern of Waiting’; it reminded her, on a level she could not begin to explain, of a forgotten tomb, an unquiet resting place occupied by something that was not as dead as it should have been....

They were natural rock formations, Cally’s rational mind told her severely. Neither memories nor premonitions — just stalactites in a slightly different form, given a foolish name by humans, who paid money to come down here and look at them, as humans did. Deliberately she crossed the cave floor — it was not so very large after all — and reached out to touch the surface of the hanging sheets of stone, as delicate and slender as her own fingers. The stone was smooth and slightly slick with moisture beneath her hand. She had half-expected the whole curtain to break loose and crash into ruin around her, but it felt as firm as the rough grey stone of the passage they had just descended.

Amery had the detector. //How far?// she demanded. //Could the container be hidden in here?// She didn’t attempt to hide from him her relief at the negative response.

//Not here. Further down, and back to the east a little — but the entrance to that passage could be anywhere,// he reminded her, playing the bright patch of his focused belt-light across the walls in a search for possible alternative exits. But there were none, save for the obvious tourist route at the far end of the cavern, where a handrail and more green lichen marked another steep downward cleft that bore all the hallmarks of having once been a stream-bed. Their eyes met in a mutual shrug.

//We’d better follow the tour route but keep our eyes open.// Cally stated the obvious, taking the lead again. She had not expected to find the caves so disturbing. She let her mind take quick comfort from his, grateful for the link maintained between them.

* * *

//Here!// And a wordless shout of excitement. Cally caught a brief image from Amery's mind of broken stone fragments on the ground, remembered her own vision of the difficult of handling the awkward case, and turned back eagerly to join him.

For a moment she thought he had disappeared; then a sharp tug on the link led her attention up to a shadowed cleft to the side of the main route at shoulder-height. She had lost track of the caves they had been through. Only four or five, she thought, though some of them had no clear exit but merely dwindled down into a constricting arch before opening up again into further galleries directly beyond. This one was apparently nameless and less spectacular than most, its walls merely stained in places with wrinkled accretions of flowstone as if spatterings of wet mud had slid down the sides of the wide passageway, smoothing out the contours of the eroded rock before sagging as they hardened. Some mineral vein here had coloured the deposits a more natural brown and yellow instead of the spectral white.

She glanced down. There was indeed a scattering of straw-like fringelets across the cave floor, hollow — she picked one up — and fragile enough that they could not have survived the passage of even one excursion party, but with no obvious source. There was an eager summons in the mind linked with hers. Cally glanced around, found a convenient handhold and a couple of ledges, and swung herself up to join him.

At once she found herself in a narrow passage whose ceiling and sides were fringed with a positive forest of the straw-growths, produced by some fluke of local conditions in weird contrast to the sluggish flows below. Amery silently indicated an area at knee-height where the delicate straws had been damaged and broken off as if by some bulky object manhandled up from below, and she nodded as their eyes met. The detector readings were still ambiguous — there was nothing to prove that this was the right passage — but more damage and scuff-marks on the bare rock further up showed that their quarry had not only scrambled up here, burden and all, but had gone on this way. The route was less obviously well-used than the tourist path down below, but had she been Vila she might have been ready to chance a fair stake on the wager that it had seen more than a single return-trip.

//You had better use some of that sand of yours to leave a mark down there to show which way to turn when we come back,// she advised, her mind full of relief that he had been so observant. If it had been left to her they would have missed the trail altogether — and she was supposed to be the experienced tracker; he was only a laboratory worker.... She shook her head ruefully and sent amused gratitude as he scrambled back down to lay out a careful marker on the bare rock below, while making a mental note to herself to scuff that over on the way back. There was no need to draw unnecessary attention to their activities.

In point of fact, the tracking from there onwards was easy. They assiduously marked every turning, but there were relatively few and it was always obvious which route had been in use. Cally began to wonder just how many people knew about this cache and whether she had been right in her assumption that the thief was a loner seeking to cheat the rest of his gang. It was starting to look as if these passages were regularly travelled by a sizeable group, although there were one or two tight squeezes that surely prohibited their use for the transport of any kind of large contraband and indeed bore signs of recent scarring showing that the case they were seeking — assuming it _had_ been responsible — had been forced through only with difficulty.

//How far now?// she sent again, straightening her borrowed uniform jacket after negotiating the second of these tight places. The over-large jacket had ridden up over her silks and threatened to engulf her entirely.

Amery had not waited for her but was scouting on ahead, his slight limp more noticeable in the sound of his footsteps than it had been when he was following close at her heels. She hoped that the knee would stand up to the strain of the return journey, or they would be in trouble. //Are we close yet?// she pressed him.

//We are still far too high.// came the puzzled reply. //The signal is coming from somewhere near sea-level, and we are well above — // The words broke down suddenly into a puzzled mixture of realisation — so _that’s_ it! — and frustration — now what? — that stubbornly refused to clarify, despite her sharp query. Cally frowned, hurrying forward to catch up, only to stop short just as he had done as she came round the corner and was faced suddenly with the end of the passage. Not a solid rock face, but open air; a cavernous shaft yawning away above and below into the darkness, filled with the sound of swift falling water.

There was a chill breeze, and she guessed that the cascading stream had broken through from above. If it were not night, there might even have been some daylight filtering down. She edged closer to the drop, but a quick glance upwards with the light showed her only slick rock, shadows and tumbling white water, and with a shrug she turned her attention to the lower part of the shaft. Down was the direction they needed to go, in any case.

//It sounds like the sea....// Amery had pulled himself together and was directing his own light down the waterfall into the pool below that seemed to fill the whole width of the opening. The waves’ surging had been in the background all the time since they had first come to the cliff, but it was certainly clearer now than it had been for some time, and there was a hint of the sea-smell of salt and decay on the air that flowed up past them.

//The lower part of the caves will almost certainly be flooded to sea-level,// Cally pointed out, examining the rocks below their shelf. The climb might almost have been possible if it had not been slippery with spray from the constantly falling water — and if the climber had both hands free and no heavy burden to transport. //That pool could well be salt water.//

There was an opening below, on the far side of the shaft, with a handy pile of rocks to help in the scramble up from water-level, and what looked like another passage on the near side right down by the water, with a strip of sand or shingle you could edge across to skirt the rim of the pool —

Amery was staring at her as he caught the drift of her thought, his mind incredulous. //Are you seriously suggesting that the man climbed down that waterfall with a biotransit case in one hand? Or even with it tied to his back?//

Cally could think of two or three ways it might be done, given the right equipment. But if this route were to be used at all frequently, she couldn’t believe there wasn’t an easier way down.

//We must have missed a turning, somewhere between this shelf and that last narrow place,// she told him, summoning up a confidence she did not entirely feel, but which proved to be justified. There was indeed an easier way down, a winding, water-worn passage that was plain enough to find once she was looking for it and no longer hurrying to catch up with her companion. Initially at least it ran the wrong way, back inland towards the heart of the cliff, and there were no convenient traces on its rocky floor to prove it to be the route they sought, but it led them inward, and down, and eventually round, with the rhythmic noise of the sea echoing ahead of them mingled with the higher-pitched sound of the falling stream. Amery sent her open admiration as they came out on the brink of the pool they had seen from above; but it had only been a lucky guess.

The water was cloudy, and the surface stirred with a sullen regularity that had nothing to do with the cascade tumbling down one side of the shaft. She crouched down at the edge — the strip of sand was narrower than she had thought — and tasted a few drops with one finger; salt. She couldn’t judge how far down the shaft continued below the point at which it was flooded, but she could make out the start of at least one underwater passage that evidently connected at some point to the sea. Everywhere the walls were glistening with moisture — spray from the waterfall, she guessed — and she thought she glimpsed some small creature darting away into the depths of the pool.

There were marks in the sand at the edge of the water. Footprints, almost certainly, the short splayed steps of a man with an awkward burden; blurred by the encroaching wetness — had he been trying to conceal his tracks? — but still distinct, and overlaid in places by a second, returning set. Amery studying the detector readings, glanced down and saw the tracks, and she sensed his rising excitement. He pointed up and to the left, where the rocks made an easy staircase to a higher passage, and she sent agreement, falling in behind him as he took an eager, limping lead. Cold air was flowing out of the tunnel past them, and it carried the sound of waves.

It was as if they had been in the caves for ever, Cally thought, following the young man almost dreamily. How had she come to get involved in this preposterous expedition? One thing led to another... and here she was, threading endless passages through the heart of a cliff in the company of a scientist who wanted Auron to join the Federation, hundreds of miles away from the rest of the _Liberator_ ’s crew, searching for some magical vaccine that would cure the ills of the galaxy. And half-asleep, she told herself severely as she stumbled and had to catch at the cave wall for balance. No wonder it was starting to feel like some kind of dream. It was late, but not that late. She had not been down here for that long, and there was no excuse for falling asleep on her feet, even if it hadn’t been quite the relaxing evening that Jenna had intended.

For a moment she thought she heard voices up ahead, borne in on a gust of wind, but by the time she was certain that she was awake, there was nothing to be heard. Amery was out of sight, drawn on by his own impatience. Cally shook her head, trying to blink sleep out of her eyes, and set herself to catch him up.


	11. Journey’s End

The trip-beam emitter was not hard to find, even in the dark. Blake considered disabling it — he had brought a selection of tools, as well as a couple of spare teleport bracelets, and it would have been easy to disconnect the power cell — but decided that was more likely to advertise his presence than to conceal it. He shone the light from his heavy-duty beamer around the cave entrance, trying to spot the trip-beam detector plate that had to be somewhere on the other side of the cleft. A sudden glassy flash at the corner of his vision gave away its location, a broad strip just above waist-height. He considered the set-up for a moment, then dropped to one knee and activated his communicator.

“Gan?”

“Gan here.” The voice was calm as ever, but Blake had learned to read beneath the surface. The big man was badly worried by Cally’s strange behaviour. So was Blake, but he trusted Cally absolutely and was prepared to hope that she knew what she was doing....

“Gan, I’m about to pass the trip-beam. I want you to monitor that civilian channel and let me know if the alarm goes off again. Contact me when you’re ready.”

Not that it would do much good to know after the event; still, if he were going to set off alarm-bells back in Morcan, it would be better to be aware of the fact. He shifted his crouch to a more comfortable position, waiting for Gan to reach the flight deck, and looked for signs that Cally had been here.

But the beamer’s strong light showed nothing but worn grass and crushed stone where many people had filed into the caves down this narrow passage. After a moment he grinned at himself: just what had he expected to find, anyway? A curl of brown hair? A telepathic footprint? Someone had gone this way and set off the primitive security system, that much he did know. The odds were good that it had been Cally.

His bracelet chimed. “Ready, Blake,” Gan’s voice told him. No further excuses for delay.... He shifted his weight over onto the crouched knee, dropped both hands to the ground to steady himself, and positioned the other foot cautiously on the far side of the trip-beam. Keeping his head down, he transferred his weight neatly across under the level of the beam and stood up inside the cave mouth.

“Right, I’m past the trip-beam,” he told Gan. “No alarms? Good. I’m going in now, so you may lose contact for a while. Keep an eye out for activity from the Morcan direction; I’d appreciate a warning if possible before anyone arrives. Of course, if you can’t get through you won’t be able to teleport me out either —” he shrugged — “so I’ll try to stay alert for security forces myself as well. I’ll just have to dodge them if necessary. Blake out.”

He looked at the dark passage ahead of him with distaste, drew a deep breath and started forwards, trying to keep the pool of light cast by the beamer aimed steadily at the floor in front of him. I’ll wring your neck when I find you, Cally, he promised himself, unconsciously echoing Jenna’s words earlier that evening. Just so long as I do find you....

The uneven scraping of his own boots on the rocky ground seemed very loud in the confined space. He halted after a few minutes, listening. Cally couldn’t be that far ahead yet. On impulse, Blake dimmed the beamer, then turned it off altogether, standing poised in the absolute dark, alert for movement deeper within the caves.

He heard nothing. Only faint sounds of wind and sea from the cliff-top he had left behind, and on the edge of hearing, something that might have been running water. “Cally!”

He had expected a fading echo, but his voice was flung back at him instantly in a sudden flat clap that was followed by a dull silence as if it had carried no distance at all. Blake had never considered himself a fanciful man, but in the darkness he could almost sense the walls drinking up the sound, denying his presence, closing in.... His hand slipped a little on the dial as he hastily turned the beamer on full, dazzling himself with the glare. The handrail to his left was reassuringly mundane, its coloured coating etched with the sweat of many hands. He caught hold of it gratefully and after a moment was able to laugh at himself.

Think of it as the maintenance tunnel of a Dome; you’ve been through far narrower crawlways than this.... Cally, after this you’re going to be on night-watches for a month if I have anything to do with it!

For an instant he considered turning back: Cally could look after herself. But if he was honest about his own motives, it wasn’t so much that he wanted to warn her, but that he needed to talk to her; to learn from her just what she was up to, to tell her to get back to the _Liberator_ by the morning, to enlist her unhesitating support for the venture to Insecution... he’d been counting on Cally, at least. Cally thought she had three days to spare, but if the _Liberator_ were to contact the rebels on Insecution before the Federation drug shipment arrived — and according to Shemezz’ sources, it had already left the C.S.C. — two extra days might be a luxury he simply couldn’t afford. And leaving Cally behind, whatever Avon might insinuate, was just not an option. Particularly if she’d got herself into some kind of gang trouble, as Gan seemed to think.

Blake released his grip on the handrail and went on down, careful of his footing, eyes focused for any trace of Cally. His imagination was firmly under control now, and he spared barely a glance for the frozen drapery of stone opposite when the first cavern opened out at last before him. Where the floor was wet, there were traces that might have been fresh footsteps... he pressed on, through a galleried succession of caves. Once, he called out her name again, this time raising a forest of echoes; but when they had all died, there was still no reply.

Searching for tracks, he could hardly miss the neat curved line of grey sand that pointed out the side-tunnel. Nor the boot-marks in the powdery remains of the crushed calcite straws. He pulled himself up, knocking free more straws as he went. Further along the passage, there was more sand. And more at the next turning. Deliberately refusing to allow himself to think about the possible implications, Blake followed the clearly-marked trail. He had to be catching up with Cally. He wondered, after a while, just what he planned to do when he found her.

* * *

Amery crossed the cavern floor cautiously — it was wet, with shallow pools in places — trying hard not to limp. His knee _ached_. He’d done his best with the equipment in the sickbay, but he was no medic — understanding how a device was supposed to work in principle wasn’t really the same as knowing how it should be used — and it had probably been calibrated for humans anyway. In the months he’d spent on the Soteros Project, he’d learnt a lot about the basic differences of alien biology on the cellular level — surprisingly few, apart from the brain-chemistry — but nothing about the detailed structure of human knee-ligaments, let alone whether his own might require a subtly different treatment....

In any case, he’d been worrying about how he could get Lanuv to cancel his pass-card. Luckily it had turned out that the process of issuing him a new one, to replace the card he’d supposedly ‘lost’ and naturally been unable to locate in his cabin or the pocket of his lab-coat, had automatically invalidated the pass-card that had previously been issued in his name. And luckily it had been Lanuv on duty, who hadn’t bothered to pay proper attention to the records the computer had automatically rolled up on the monitor screen as it complied with her request. Luckily — because the records clearly showed that the pass-card bearing the name of Science Officer (Grade II) Amery had been used to operate the access locks that night only a short time before its owner turned up claiming to have left it behind in the ship....

It was just as well Lanuv hadn’t been looking at his face, either. For a moment the world had seemed to turn upside-down, and he had thought he’d finally understood; Cally had delayed him, Cally had been in it from the start, Cally and her terrorist human friends had set the whole deal up. Like that ghastly moment of clarity outside the spaceport when she had spoken of the _Liberator_ , and all the little intuitive wrongnesses in the things she’d been saying had suddenly slipped into place, and he’d finally realised who she was.

That was what had delayed them, of course, ironically enough; his own suspicions, none of her fault. None of it had been her fault — she’d done what she could, done more for a young stranger than any duty could dictate, in fact, and made no attempt to conceal her identity. She was no more ashamed of her exile than he was of his own. They had made assumptions at cross-purposes — that was all.

Her name had become famous on Auron, in a way, since she left. The exiled wanderer who had refused to sink into obscurity; the telepath of the _Liberator_ whose name was whispered within the Federation together with those of Blake and the rest of that crew; the only daughter of Auron most humans had ever heard of; more of a threat to Auron’s precious neutrality now than she could ever have been if she had stayed to cause trouble at home.

He had not been part of the consensus that had exiled her — he had barely been adult, then, and more interested in his own pursuits than in politics, off-world or otherwise. A year later, things had been different. Cally of the Auronar had become notorious, and he himself had begun to form the political views that were to lead to his own exile. He had heard a lot about her, and disliked all of what he heard.

None of them had mentioned that she was fierce and beautiful as a hunting bird, calm as a rock, bold as fire, honest as dawn in the desert. They had not told him — how could they? — that she moved like a dancer, like a huntress, at once poised and flowing as she came across the wide, low-roofed cavern towards him, as if there were no rocks less than a foot above her neat dark head and no shallow pools or slick surfaces beneath her feet.

He couldn’t help smiling as their eyes met. He could sense that she was tired, but she gave him a small smile in return and let him take her arm as he urged her over to the far side of the cave, towards the sound of the sea with the chill air in their faces, despite her puzzled query. He wanted it to be a surprise to her as it had been to him; but she guessed, of course, clicking off her belt-light even before he prompted her, as they reached the broad cleft through which one could see the weird heaving glow of the surf-flecked waves under the alien light of the great low moon. He led her through, one hand in hers, bending his head to pass through the arch as if bowing to her in some stately dance.

The wide black rock was spray-damp in the moonlight from the waves that surged and ebbed some six feet below them at the foot of the cliff. An intrusion of harder stone from below, this one strong dark prow alone had survived as the cliffs around it were worn back under the ceaseless assault of the sea, and now its slick surface jutted out into deep water, sheared off almost level as if in imitation of a man-made jetty.

Cally pulled gently free from him and ran out to the far end, a surefooted shadow, to stand poised above the incoming waves, gazing out across the ocean like a statue high above some vast empty ceremonial square. As he followed, more cautiously, he saw her crouch down to examine something set into the surface of the rock.

She glanced up as he finally reached her, directing her belt-light’s beam down onto the antique-seeming hoop of greenish-brown metal in her fingers.

//Mooring-rings, I think — for boats, in the old days — // She sent the light dancing along the edge of the rock, revealing two more of the worn hoops. //I was right; the locals must have been using these caves long before the visitors came. Probably for smuggling, even then. I wonder what cargo they used to hide here? It can hardly have been fish....//

She let the light flick off again, running the metal through her hands almost absently, her attention caught again by the horizon, and his eyes followed hers out along the endless dark rollers, where the ocean stretched on and on around the planet, with only a few island land-masses to intrude upon its domain. He had seen it from space as the _Gergovia_ made planetfall; but that was not quite the same thing as actually standing here within a few feet of an ocean whose waters covered a whole world. On Auron, the seas were land-locked — huge bodies of water, but each with its own boundary. One could travel on the surface from pole to pole without ever taking ship over the water. Here, one could travel from pole to pole of the planet without ever touching land. It was a strange thought.

Cally’s head tilted sharply to one side, and he felt a spike of tension come across the link.

//Listen!//

The command cut across his instinctive query, and a second later he heard it too: snatches of voices and what might have been the sound of a hover-engine, carried briefly in their direction by the eddying wind.

//There — towards the town — // Following her prompting, he had just managed to catch a glimpse of some kind of low vehicle coming out over the bay towards them when a sudden brilliant light stabbed out.

Automatically he flung up an arm to shield his eyes and slipped, the hand-detector flying from his grasp, clutching to save himself as Cally pulled him hard against her and down. Her body pressed his close against wet rock as the searchlight beam wavered over the foot of the cliff and then up, leaving them in absolute blackness. Cally released him; but he could sense the tautness in her, the instincts of one accustomed to be hunted.

//We need to get under cover and out of here. It was stupid to waste so much time — Where is the detector?// Her groping hand collided with his shoulder as he raised himself up onto hands and knees on the slippery, unforgiving surface, and she felt down his arm to search across the space to the right of where he had been lying, where they had both heard the light-weight casing fall with an ominous skittering crack. Above them, the searchlight beam that raked out from across the waters of the bay snapped off as abruptly as it had first come on.

//Now!// His companion’s grasp reached for him again, deliberately this time, as she caught his arm and dragged him to his feet, urging him after her into a stumbling, crouching run, almost blind, towards the dark cleft that was just becoming visible in the paler looming grey of the cliff-face above. Outlines were beginning to emerge again as his eyes re-adjusted to the moonlight. He could just make out that Cally had the detector unit in her free hand.

//Who is it out there?// he protested, baulking for a moment before allowing the darkness of the cave to swallow them. //Why are we running?//

//We have no way of knowing who they are. And I doubt if you would wish to find out.// Cally had coaxed a faint radiance from her belt-light, shielding it with her body from the direction of the sea, and she was intent on the detector in her hands. The seal on the handle-grip was open, and her mind was full of fierce concentration as she tested for loose connections with cautious fingers. She spared him only a fraction of her attention; the rest was intent upon the instrument that stubbornly refused to come back to life. He could read no trace of blame in her. In a way that made it worse. He had allowed the detector to fall; he had been responsible for their presence out on the natural jetty in the first place....

//Stop that. You make it hard for me to think.// She sent him sharp reproof, mixed with a hint of amusement. //Go and search. Unless there is a side-passage, your samples must be in here, somewhere.//

The sounds from outside of the approaching air-car, still audible only in snatches as the wind varied, were already clearer and closer. Amery switched on his own belt-light again, keeping the beam set wide and low in imitation of Cally, and obediently began to examine the cave, trying to remember the last directional reading he had made. She was right, of course. The tracer signal had been coming from somewhere very close. But the smooth white sides of the insulated container should have been obvious at first glance if the stolen anti-virus sample were truly in here, and there was no sign of it.

Hidden, then. He would not allow himself to consider the alternatives. The roof of the chamber was almost flat, but there were crevices up at head-height along the walls. Those would make good hiding-places. He set himself to make a hurried but methodical search while, behind him, Cally’s frustration and impatience grew.

//This is no use,// she admitted after a few minutes more. Her light flickered wildly along the wall as she came over to join him. //I don’t believe this is standard communications technology — //

//Stop — don’t move — // He put all the force he could into that, and to his surprise she obeyed without question. Only her eyes followed him as he moved quickly across the cavern and reached up to pull at the folded brown glossy corner revealed in the random beam of her belt-light. The bulky lexane bag was not what he had expected, and it was _heavy_....

Cally took in the situation at a glance, and he felt her steadying hands behind him as the glossy fabric slipped down into his arms. She helped him guide the bag to the floor. The catch yielded swiftly to her skilful fingers, and she lifted out a mass of thin, tough rope. Underneath — he shut his eyes, his heart’s rhythm racing suddenly — underneath was a familiar white-and-green lid with the seals apparently intact. When he looked again, it was still true.... Cally put her arms around him briefly, leaning her face against his shoulder, sharing the relief and joy that leaped through their linked minds.

After a couple of seconds, she released him and began gathering up the rope, coiling it around her own shoulder. Amery remained still for a moment, trying to savour the memory; but he could not ignore her urgency, and with a sign he leaned forward and re-sealed the lexane bag — he badly wanted to check that the Soteros samples were all intact, but the fewer possibilities for contamination the better — and took one handle as she took the other.

Light chased suddenly round the cavern from outside, and the sound of the hover-motor flared and died against the rock as the searchlight beam flicked past. Brief commands were followed by the obedient clang of mooring grapples.

//Go — go!// Cally thrust him forward both mentally and physically. //We have to get out of here. Do you want them to catch you again?// He caught nightmare memories of the alley from her, and fear — fear for him, he realised with a jolt, as they plunged into the confines of the tunnel, jostling awkwardly with the heavy weight slung between them.

But her mind was calm and clear, despite the haste: //They cannot be certain that we are here. If they have merely come to pick up the goods, they may not know that we are here at all. If we can only hide....// Time was not on their side. Time was running short — he _had_ to get back to the _Gergovia_ , and they both knew it —

Water boiled suddenly, unexpectedly, in front of them. For a moment he thought they must have taken a wrong turning; with his free hand he switched his belt-light back up to maximum beam, directing it around and up the shaft where the spray of white water fell. This was the way they had come. They had climbed up the rocks from the brink of the pool — the pool that had somehow, impossibly, risen to flood the shaft almost to the brink of the passage where they halted, trapped by sullen, heaving green-grey water. There was no way across. The lower tunnel that had brought them here was gone, its gently shelving length filled with salt water like the murky passage that had been underwater even when they came, linking the shaft with the sea — the sea, that had incomprehensibly filled these caves, that had half-covered the footprints in the sand even before they had found them — the sea —

Oh stupid, stupid; stupid to forget. //The moon! A single planetary ocean — a single natural satellite in close orbit — //

Cally’s assent was bitter. //Yes. Tidal effects on the sea-level. And the level is still rising.// She glanced back. //Hence the pools left in that cave — and this passage may well flood too.//

Was it his imagination, or was the water already lapping higher against the rocks at their feet? It had been stupid — worse, unscientific, _provincial_ — to ignore the possibility of such a well-known natural phenomenon. Just because Auron had no moon —

He too glanced back. //We’re trapped!// He could feel panic rising; the air-car outside, the water ahead, the great weight of the cliff above them.... He was losing control again; he struggled for discipline, found only shame —

Cally was there. Her mind was cool and firm around his, insistent. //Listen.// Decision flowed through her. //Amery, listen! I can get us out. I can climb the shaft and gain the upper passage, then you can use the rope — the water will never reach that high — //

Her light sought out the shelf high above where they had once stood looking down, and lingered unconsciously on the spray-slick walls to the side of the tumbling stream. He felt his heart twist, appalled.

//You can’t!//

That was a mistake. Her mouth hardened. //I can.// And she was gone suddenly from beside him, slipping into the water with barely a splash, striking out, fully-clad, across the pool. For a moment she clung, struggling, at the far side, bent fingers scrabbling for a grip on slippery rock, while soaked clothing and the dripping bulk of the rope dragged her back. Then she found a foothold and began to claw her way up under the constant beating spray of the cascade, all grace sacrificed to the desperate need to keep holding on.

Frozen, he watched the splayed dark figure edge its way up the wall, fear knotting its way through his mind until he no longer knew if it was his or hers, his own fingers twisted and slippery with cold sweat or hers crooked across icy wet ledges. He tried to fight it down, to shield them both and will her on. It was all he knew how to do for her. The fear was hers, he knew that now; it was too far, the weight was dragging her off-balance, she could not, could not.... Her teeth were set, her bare will driving her on: I can!

He found himself shaping her name in a whisper over and over again. “Cally — Cally — oh, Cally —” Listening to the sound of it out loud, as if it were a charm to bring her back safely, to keep them together....

She was still moving. Still fighting upwards, high above the pool now, falling water stinging her face and blinding her from moment to moment. Another hand-hold, and then another; and something was catching her — pulling her back — just as her fingers were closing on the rock, in that vital moment as her weight came onto the new hold. She lunged for the hold. Was jerked back. Felt her balance going.

For a split second, the gun-belt held her as she slipped, the coiled cable caught around the projection that had hooked her. Her fingers clutched desperately at the wall and found no purchase. And then the weapon was torn free, and he saw her fall, with a bright unforgettable bloom of terror between his mind and hers. She did not cry out. There was a clear, sickening sound as she struck the rock and was flung clear.

He never heard her body hit the water. There was tearing, blinding pain in his mind — emptiness that reached out for him, tried to suck him down —

The link between them was gone. It was the first thing he knew for certain, curled there tightly on the hard unforgiving floor, his muscles rigid enough to hurt. For a moment he didn’t understand. He reached out for her; found nothing — remembered — scrambled frantically to his feet, playing the light out over the pool —

The rope coiled across her body kept her afloat, limbs trailing away into the depths. She was limp and horribly heavy in his arms as he gathered her from the water, her face ice-cold against his cheek. He reached out for her mind-pattern helplessly, further and further as he found nothing. Her features were slack, the fleeting beauty of the mind that moved behind them gone. He stared at her for a long moment.

// _Cally_!// He broadcast that with all his strength, sending out all his pain into it, not caring who or what might hear him; no longer expecting any reply. There was none.

* * *

On one level, Blake almost missed the telepathic cry altogether. Without having known Cally, he might never have recognised what it was that hit him like a fist in the guts just as he was edging sideways through a rocky squeeze that threatened to close the passage completely; let alone been attuned enough to straighten up sharply in understanding, crack himself hard on the head as a result, drop the beamer, and end up wedged and struggling in a world that was suddenly full of wild shadows and suffocating walls. He forced himself to relax; to ease his way free, to reach in for the overturned beamer until he had it secure in his grasp once more.

His mind was still racing. He had heard _words_ — Cally’s name — cried out with an urgency even a non-telepath could not help but sense. Someone had been calling out to Cally. Someone — a telepath — was afraid _for_ Cally. Something was terribly wrong.... He raised his teleport bracelet.

“Gan?” Gan had tried to contact him, earlier. The communication link had been so fuzzy that he’d barely been able to make out the other man’s voice. He’d guessed at the message anyway; security forces from the town moving in. Nothing to do but press on.

The odds were that he wouldn’t be able to contact Gan now, either — but it was worth a try. “Come in, _Liberator_. Gan, respond!”

More fuzzy static. Then, faintly, Gan’s voice. “Blake?”

“Gan, did you hear that just now?” There was urgency in Blake’s voice. Already the numbness of that impact was no more than a memory; but surely it had not been just his imagination?

“I can only just hear you, Blake —”

“I mean telepathy,” Blake interrupted. “I thought I picked up something....”

A pause. “I don’t think so,” Gan said dubiously. “But Cally was reporting to you before, not to me —”

“It wasn’t Cally!” Blake was sure of that. And he didn’t think it had been aimed at him. Or at humans at all — Cally’s telepathy was always crystal clear, and the sending that had hit him just now had been almost incomprehensible, transmitted on multiple levels his mind just wasn’t equipped to pick up. It must have been the other Auron, the Federation officer she’d been with. And that meant... that meant —

Gan was still talking, trying to tell him something. His train of thought had gone.

“...air-car outside,” the static-distorted voice from the communicator managed. “...in at sea-level.... Blake, I tried to contact you —”

“I already guessed,” Blake snapped, trying to remember the insight he’d had. It was no good. “I’ll be careful. Blake out.”

Cally was in trouble. Call it intuition, call it empathy; call it subconscious logic if you preferred — his thoughts touched on Avon for a moment, and his frown deepened. Avon had changed, over the last weeks. He’d always been remote and hostile, but the hostility was starting to feel personal — Forget Avon; find Cally....

What are you trying to do, Cally? Why don’t you trust us? Are you all right?

He moved forward along the tunnel, quickly now; he’d wasted too much time. Cool air flowed past him. There must be some kind of exit up ahead. He could hear water —

The shaft yawned abruptly in front of him, and Blake drew in his breath sharply, holding the beamer high, tracing the plume of white water up out of sight. There might well be a way through to the outside up there, but not one that any human could use. Nor any Auron....

One hand on the wall to steady himself, he leant out further, tensing as his attention was caught by a familiar shape — familiar, but almost grotesquely out of place pinned there against streaming grey rock. Even as he stared, the cable slipped a little and the weapon swung momentarily clear of the tumbling water; no doubt left at all. Alien, iridescent, incongruously light-weight and fragile for the lethal energies it unleashed — it was a _Liberator_ hand-gun, twin to the one he himself carried. It had to be Cally’s gun, hanging trapped and dangling as perhaps its owner had hung.... No. Be logical. Avon would be logical — Avon wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place — Think. How had Cally managed to lose her weapon half-way down a waterfall?

Even as he watched, the cable slipped again. It couldn’t have been hanging there long — just for the few minutes since he’d heard that cry, perhaps.... Where had she gone? The lower part of the shaft was filled with water, and a couple of bights of slender rope trailed sluggishly on its unquiet surface, leading away into a shadowed overhang at water-level which might have been another passage... but why abandon the rope? What had gone wrong? If she had fallen — the idea took root, and would not be shifted — if she had fallen —

Cally, Cally, where are you? Not under that cold grey water; no, please —

He couldn’t get down there. But he couldn’t leave. Not while there was any doubt. And there _was_ doubt — enormous doubt — he was jumping to conclusions.

The teleport could get him down into that lower passage. If it would work from here. If there really was a break in the rock — some kind of pot-hole overhead — then it might be enough to let Gan teleport him out. Teleporting back in down below — with another thirty feet of shielding overhead in the form of solid rock — was another matter. You’d have to set up relative co-ordinates, for a start. Gan couldn’t; or at least didn’t trust himself enough to try. Blake wasn’t entirely certain that he himself could do it, not without the reassurance of Cally’s smile of confirmation across the console... Cally.... Orac could do it; though he’d like to know just how the self-satisfied little machine had acquired such expertise with the _Liberator_ ’s teleport systems. He suspected that Orac’s activities at Spaceworld had included more than just massive data sabotage, but if that was the case, the computer wasn’t telling. In any case, the estimated horizontal and vertical displacements from his current location would have to come from Blake, and an error of a couple of feet either way would make the whole matter academic — he’d end up teleporting himself into solid rock. Assuming there wasn’t some kind of safety cut-out, in which case presumably nothing would happen at all....

He was temporizing. Afraid of the truth. Afraid, yes, for Cally, afraid of getting himself killed in some stupid mess-up with the teleport; but basically afraid of _knowing_. As if this were some kind of thought-experiment, and Cally would be neither dead nor alive until he saw her....

The black cable of Cally’s gun trembled under the falling water, slipped one last time, and came quietly free. The beamer’s light caught a final brief crystalline gleam from the weapon as it fell, then it struck the water with a muted splash and was gone. Blake stared after it.


	12. Payment Deferred

Afternoon on Insecution was as cold and bleak as the morning, and thanks to the uninspired ideas of the decorators who had laid out this apartment, Servalan had been exposed to panoramic views of it every day so far. She really had to get something done about the programming of that picture-window, she resolved for at least the third time today; by tomorrow at the latest. Tonight, if she could get a link up to the command ship by then....

“I’m afraid your presence during the operation really will be out of the question, Supreme Commander,” Morrey Batracho was saying. “Not only from a diplomatic but from a military point of view, it could prove very embarrassing. Apart from anything else, as a serving officer you greatly outrank the individuals who would normally take command of such a unit....”

Excuses. Paltry, pathetic, excuses. The planetary government — meaning Batracho, at this point — wanted to conceal the extent of the Federation’s involvement, for their own propaganda purposes. Servalan had every intention of being present during the covert operation to observe and ensure the rebels’ capture of the pacification-drug-laced anti-virus — she had her own plans, and there was a high chance that her personal intervention would be required to ensure that events took place as intended.

Besides, she wanted _him_ to see her; to see her and understand, before he died. He would understand... he was no fool. He had evaded her for a long time, longer than any of the others; save the President, of course. But the President would have to wait. Even Servalan could not yet move openly against the President.

The Deputy-Governor was still mouthing excuses. Perhaps a show of compliance would be wise, after all. Central Security had their own plans for the captured rebels, and overt sabotage of Central Security plans was in some ways even less advisable than scheming against the President. At least the President was nominally accountable to the High Council....

“Believe me, Acting-Governor,” she interrupted at last — would the man never stop bleating? — “the Terran Federation has not the slightest desire to embarrass your government. I am certain that your officers are entirely competent to carry out the operation without our intervention. I assure you that I have no desire to interfere. Consider the matter closed.”

Batracho looked at her sharply for a moment, brushing a hand across his stubby moustache. Servalan’s lips tightened, and she remembered belatedly that this man was rather less stupid than he might seem. Very well, provided they could come to some discreet understanding on the subject, it would make little difference.

She sank back into the sculpted comfort of her chair, letting the white expanse of desk between them emphasise her authority. She had deliberately omitted to ask him to sit down on this occasion, and she had chosen to receive him from a position of power behind her desk rather than joining him out in front in the carefully contrived intimacy of their earlier interview. Batracho had served his purpose, for the moment at least, and while he might currently be virtual ruler of this planet, despite its pretensions to democracy, their nominal status as negotiating equals could not be allowed to obscure the vast gulf between the prestige of the Deputy-Governor of cold, barren Insecution and of the Supreme Commander of the forces of the Terran Federation. She had no intention of encouraging him to prolong this visit, despite his evident eagerness to do so; her current interest was in the man he was supposed to have brought with him, the Intelligence officer she had been promised.

Abruptly tired of polite fencing, she broached the subject directly. “Deputy-Governor, I understood that you had located a suitable aide with knowledge of your Intelligence network. I think that it is time I saw him for myself. Would you call him in, please?”

She had been expecting a young man, some superfluous junior officer eager to please; good-looking perhaps. What she saw, as the white slab of the door hissed aside, was — the most complimentary term that came to mind was ‘stolid’. Short, round-shouldered, round-faced, middle-aged and balding, stout enough to make Batracho appear positively svelte — for a moment she wondered uncharitably if that had been the intention — the individual who obediently entered the room wore an expression of myopic dullness that was almost too complete to be plausible. She was expected to work with _this_?

Perhaps the man was a genius in his own field. He had better be. The one point in his favour so far was that he was clean-shaven, without the ubiquitous Insecution moustache apparently sported by every adult male on this benighted planet, and as mitigating points went, it was hardly the most compelling she had ever encountered.

He came to a halt a half-pace behind Batracho, and there was a pause as he stared owlishly at the desk. A flush mounted to the Deputy-Governor’s face. “Introduce yourself, man!” he snapped aside at his subordinate under his breath.

“My name is Venn, Realgar Venn. Intelligence Commander, ma’am.” The sagging body drew itself up into something approaching military posture, and nondescript eyes lifted to acknowledge the green-shimmering figure seated behind the six-foot width of sweeping polytraleptolide. Unconsciously, Servalan inhaled, her head poising itself elegantly on the graceful neck under the gaze of male eyes, even of these; in the corner of her vision she caught Batracho’s mesmerised reaction. But from Venn there came not a flicker of response. The dull eyes might have been regarding some blurred column of figures, rather than the most powerful woman in the galaxy.

Not a muscle stirred behind the beautiful mask of the Supreme Commander’s face, but the eyes that lifted to Batracho were cold. “Just what are the qualifications of this officer, Deputy-Governor?”

If she had detected the slightest hint of amusement in him, it would have proved fatal; she would have had that seen to. Personally, if possible. But he was ruffled and glaring, and she reluctantly absolved him of any intention to mock her.

“Commander Venn has twenty years’ experience in Intelligence, ma’am. I have been assured that he has the entire history of the rebellion at his fingertips. He is totally dedicated to his work, and he is not only the most senior officer who could be spared for special duties, but the only member of the entire Intelligence section with a Federation security clearance. However, I must say —” Batracho was scowling — “that I had not previously made his acquaintance in person!”

Venn’s bovine stare had dropped to the desk again. He gave no sign of resentment at being discussed in such a manner by his superiors, nor any sign that the fact of their conversation had even registered on him. Servalan’s eyes dwelt on him again. Either very discreet — or very stupid. Or, of course, very clever. Who had given this creature a Federation security clearance, and why?

In any case, not even a double-A security clearance would get him access to the file she planned to consult. A Supreme Commander had certain privileges, and her security override could be used to cut both ways. That data was sealed until she chose to make use of it herself.

She allow her expression to thaw a little and bestowed a gracious smile on Batracho. “I am grateful for your attention in this matter, Acting-Governor, but you must not allow me to keep you from your duties. I am sure the administration of this planet must take up a great deal of your time....” She leant forward, one slim forefinger brushing almost casually across the door-control remote among the other controls set into the surface of her desk. As the sensors cut in, the outer door of the suite slid open and Batracho finally seemed to get the message. He saluted her rather stiffly and departed.

Servalan returned her attention to the newest member of her entourage, studying him from under lowered lashes. The wooden face betrayed no hint of curiosity as to why he had been brought here, nor any nervousness at having been left alone in the presence of an officer of vastly superior rank. Standing there, waiting with infinite patience for the next order which might concern him, he could almost have seemed a mutoid; save that no such physically-defective specimen would ever have been selected for bionic rebuild.

Unimaginative; reliable; passed over for promotion after promotion; she could imagine his career. The eternal subordinate — in some ways, the perfect subordinate. Or, the perfect agent. Which?

Servalan’s instincts refused to let her believe that anyone could be so innocent, so apolitical, so completely oblivious to hints of dissension between senior officers in his presence; information that could be used to ride the tide of favour and promotion or to steer his career away from a soon-to-be-setting star. There had been intrigue among the junior officers in every ship she’d commanded, and, later, among her general staff, and with a few exceptions she had tolerated it. Because it amused her to watch them vying for her favour, manipulating to discredit one another, dancing attendance on those who were perceived to have influence; and because Space Command needed schemers, manipulators, political animals. Those who survived were those who came out on top — those who had what it took to succeed in the Federation, those who could play the cautious grey-thinkers of the Civil Administration at their own game and make sure Space Command got the resources it needed and the influence it deserved. The Administration was nominally in authority over Space Command, but one of these years they would learn their error. Because Space Command finally had the Supreme Commander it had always deserved, and when she made her bit for ultimate power it would be behind her every step of the way....

She made little secret of her ambitions. For the moment, she made no direct move against the President; that old scandal could still bite both ways, and while the leverage of her knowledge had won her this position over the heads of older, more experienced officers, the President could still use his knowledge to threaten _her_ with exposure and humiliation if she dared to press him too hard. Their shared secret locked them together in a deadly grip where neither could afford to be the first to yield. Time was on her side. The President was of an earlier generation, and would soon grow old. She could afford to wait.

But there were other enemies; those who felt threatened, others whom she had trampled and carelessly left alive in her rise to power. There had been attempts made on her life, more blatant now that rumours of Blake’s continued liberty were starting to spread — for the first time in her career there was a weak point in her record, and those with reason to hate her had lost no time in closing in. Blake would pay for that, too.... Any one of her enemies, in the Service or out of it, would jump at the chance of planting an agent on her, particularly if they had somehow gained a hint of the months of research that had led her to this planet, or the burning personal urgency that had brought the Supreme Commander herself here to conduct the negotiations on behalf of the Federation.

Intelligence Commander Realgar Venn could be an agent; or he could be useful. In fact — a thoughtful smile touched Servalan’s lips — a known agent could in himself be very useful. She laid a finger on another control, and the comm link to the inner chambers of the suite chimed into life.

“Allard, bring the other chair back in here,” she ordered softly, and switched off without bothering to wait for the servant’s acknowledgement. Allard would have been there, heard, and already be obeying. Her personal attendants were trained well. Those who failed through negligence to be present when needed did not last long.

Fair-haired Allard came in on silent feet and set the chair down, as directed, behind the terminal moulded into the desk to Servalan’s left. Another gesture sent the servant back to wait patiently in the inner rooms until summoned.

The Supreme Commander’s eyes rose once again to the expressionless face in front of her. She leaned forward invitingly, savouring the cool brush of shifting green silk across her shoulders. “Come here, Venn. Sit down. I think it’s time I became acquainted with your potential.”

He baulked at that, half-comprehension and slow dismay stirring in the heavy features. “Ma’am, do you expect me to talk —”

“No, Commander Venn, I expect you to sit down!” Believe me, Venn, I already know better than to expect small-talk out of _you_.

She watched him lower himself awkwardly into the moulded curves of the chair. It was not designed for data-terminal work, and he was forced to perch himself on the edge of the seat. The trailing sleeves of her gown brushed against him as she leaned across to activate the terminal, deliberately placing herself close enough to disconcert. “Supreme Commander Servalan,” she told the terminal as the screen cleared into life. “Secure access required.”

She placed her palm on the scan-plate as additional confirmation. “Identity confirmed,” the system responded after a second. “Configured up-link via command ship _Amritsar_ now active. Access is available to all Terran Federation systems, security status Gamma Alpha two zero.”

She would have preferred a double-Alpha status; but the up-link was inherently insecure, and the Gamma Alpha rating was the best the system had achieved so far. A good omen, perhaps. Now that the moment had come she found herself nervous, even superstitious. This was the planet; every trail had led in this direction. _He_ had hidden well, but he could not hide for ever. This moment was just the confirmation of what she already knew — but all the same, she was nervous.

She tilted her head back until she could see Venn’s damp red face above her, eyes stiffly averted from the supple body lounging almost in his lap, and smiled again. “Venn.” He had to look at her now. “Venn, I want you to access the Intelligence section’s file on the rebels.” He did not move, and her tone sharpened. “Access the system, Venn!”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am —” the eyes met hers, but they were as bovine as ever — “but I can’t reach the terminal. If you could see your way to giving me a little room to work —”

Blood rushed to Servalan’s face as if he had slapped her. This menial, this underling, dared to ignore her allure, to insinuate that she was in the way — ! She chose to pretend the insult had never happened, returning to her seat with cat-like ease, leaning towards him with both elbows propped on the desk by the terminal. Deliberately, she let one long sleeve trail across his hand as he reached for the scan-plate. He brushed it off almost fastidiously, apparently oblivious to the beautiful woman to his right as he ran through the access sequence for local Intelligence with the familiarity of long practice. For all the attention he paid to her, she might as well have been a Delta store-clerk.

The Supreme Commander’s nostrils were pinched with anger. How dared he snub her like this? She did not, personally, want him — the very idea was disgusting — but she expected him to want her, to confirm her beauty and desirability, to pay the homage that was due to the power she had exerted over every man within her orbit for the last twenty years, since she was a wide-eyed, precocious child.

Venn knew what he was doing, she had to admit that. He was accessing the Intelligence reports now, glancing across for further instructions, apparently as oblivious of her pique as he had been of her beauty. She restrained a momentary urge to claw out those blank, self-satisfied eyes. “Abort that,” she told him coldly. “I want a verbal report and summary. Morrey Batracho claims that you have all the facts at your fingertips, so you had better prove him right. What does the Intelligence section know about the current leader of the rebel group on Insecution?”

Instinctively, Venn tried to stiffen to attention to deliver his report — a posture frustrated by the design of the chair — and his resulting wince drew a cruel inward smile from Servalan. He succeeded in folding his arms formally across his chest. “Current name — Endymion Wright,” he began in a loud monotone. “Original name — unknown. Believed to be a Federation citizen. Age — subject appears to be in his early sixties, Federation standard years. Distinguishing marks, heavy facial scarring, cause unknown.

“Subject Wright is believed to have been present on Insecution for three years and to have arrived with the specific intention of aiding local terrorist activities. The date of his first contact with the rebel group remains unknown, but within three months Standard of his presumed arrival information was received that the leadership of the group had been challenged, and since that period he appears to have become undisputed leader.

“Identity of Wright has not been confirmed, but analysis of the new and successful tactics he has apparently introduced to rebel operations suggests that they are based on textbook Federation military practice. The theory has therefore been advanced that Wright may be a deserter from Federation military service, possibly of high rank. Federation contacts neither confirm nor deny this.

“Recommended action: rebel successes have increased sharply under the leadership of subject Wright. His execution or capture should be considered matters of the highest priority. Summary ends.”

Unprompted, Venn leant forward and called up a picture of ‘Endymion Wright’ from the files. It was poor quality, evidently captured on a security monitor during some raid and later computer-enhanced to the limits of viability, and showed a grey-bearded face virtually in profile, eyes almost indistinguishable in heavy shadow, the scarring just visible in the uneven growth of the wiry beard. Servalan stared at it, frowning. He had borne neither scars nor beard when she had known him — if it _was_ the same man. But everything else — the dates, the tactics, fitted; fitted like a glove. Though she would have liked to know who the ‘Federation contacts’ were who had so crassly confirmed Insecution suspicions as to the origins of this dangerous new leader — and why she had not been informed of these enquiries. But that was a matter which could be referred back to Space Headquarters in her absence.

“Access Federation personnel files code Alpha 10924, codename _Overlord_ ,” she told Venn; then her mouth tightened in annoyance. “Fool, I said _Federation_ personnel files — and you need my personal security override before you can open that record —”

Her pulse raced suddenly as a hatefully familiar name and face came up on the screen. She stared at it. That personnel record was security-locked to the Supreme Commander alone. Not even the President or the High Council had access to the codes needed to unlock it. Yet this pathetic excuse for an Intelligence Commander, not even a Federation citizen, had brought up a copy from his own local files — had _known the significance_ of the file she referred to and found another copy without using her private codename —

Fear fuelled her rage. “Just how did you get hold of that file?” she demanded of him. He had to be an agent; and now he was showing his hand, demonstrating just how much he knew....

Venn squinted at her, puzzled. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but Federation Central Security told me to keep a copy when they came here enquiring about Wright. So when the Supreme Commander starts asking the same questions, well, I naturally thought....” A stubby finger stabbed out into the projected image. “That’s the right file isn’t it? A10924? Well, I thought seeing as I haven’t got the security clearance, I’d save time by bringing up the local copy.” The moon-like face looked honestly perplexed. “I did right, didn’t I? Not deleting it? Central Security never told me to, after they reckoned they’d finished....”

Central Security.... Servalan was no longer listening. Central Security were after _him_. Of course they were. Blind, stupid, _careless_ of her not to have thought of it. A man like Andra Varro, Principal of the Federation Space Academy, couldn’t just disappear — defect — without bringing Central Security sniffing about his trail. And she had used her private, exclusive override to seal his file against casual access, to make sure she got to him first... but she hadn’t got here first. Central Security, unencumbered by questions of diplomacy and medical research, had moved faster on the trail than she had — and as it turned out, she might just as well have broadcast her interest in Varro across the upper echelons, because by now Central Security would already know exactly who had sealed that file, and they would be wondering why. Better to have left it in obscurity; better to have used a lower-level security code. Central Security wanted Varro, alias Wright — and if he failed to turn up during the planned sweep of rebels, it was the Supreme Commander who would be likely to be asked to account for his absence.

She drew herself up proudly. Let them ask: they would be able to prove nothing, she would make sure of that. Above all, Central Security must _not_ get their hands on Andra Varro. His knowledge must be silenced, and silenced forever. Central Security chose to set themselves up as self-appointed keepers of the balance between the Civil Administration and Space Command, and if they once got hold of a lever like that to use against an ambitious Supreme Commander, they would not hesitate to use it against her.

Her eyes fell on Venn. Agent or no agent, he knew too much. She needed him under her control, and fast.

“I did right, didn’t I?” he appealed again uneasily, vaguely conscious now of the Federation Supreme Commander’s inexplicable displeasure.

Servalan saw her chance and took it. “I congratulate you, Commander. You showed great initiative,” she assured him. “Perhaps you can save me even more time. I assume that Central Security had reason, as I do, to believe that ‘Endymion Wright’ could well be the missing Andra Varro. They must have run correlation checks through your computers to confirm his identity. Do you know if there are copies of their results in your system?”

“No copies, ma’am,” Venn told her. “But I can give you the results.” He screwed up his eyes and clenched his fists in an effort of memory that first amused and then astounded Servalan as the statistics reeled out with barely a pause. The man was incredible. Central Security had blundered badly, firstly in using him without realising his gift and then in leaving him alive for her to make use of the knowledge trapped in that slow-moving brain.

The statistics themselves were much as she had expected. Every check Central Security had run came up with an overwhelming probability that Wright and Varro were one and the same man. They only confirmed the gut instinct she’d had since that first conversation with Batracho. She had tracked her quarry down at last.

Varro had done well, she admitted grudgingly. Compelled to disappear in order to save himself, to abandon the post of Principal of the Academy which he had held for so long with such success, he had turned his fabled tactical skills to the task of concealing himself, and effectively vanished from sight for almost four years, despite all the resources Servalan had at her command. Forced to oppose the Federation for his own safety, it was somehow typical of _him_ to have made himself a leader among rebels, to have employed the tactics that had rewritten the textbooks to frustrate the Federation’s aims on Insecution. Dear Varro, she thought with something close to affection, you could never bear to be less than successful in anything you did, could you? You have been a worthy opponent — far more worthy of my steel than our fool of a President. Almost, I wish we could have been equals. I would have been good for you, Andra. But you saw me as a spoilt, rebellious child, and I was obsessed with Keller. I only knew you as the Principal, the ultimate court of appeal to overrule the petty-minded instructor who wanted to ruin my career. You should never have abused your position, Andra. No-one humiliates Servalan. No-one.

Venn was still doing his best to sit to attention. “Commander, your assistance has been quite invaluable,” she told him sincerely. She feigned to think for a moment. “Tell me... how would you like to be promoted to the position of my personal liaison officer? I shall need a man who knows Insecution and its rebels....”

She had him. She knew it from the moment that the round cheeks split apart in a beam of pleasure at the word ‘promoted’. Every man had his lever, and she had just found his. Batracho, Venn, the absent Travis, she had them all dancing on her strings. Even Varro, though he didn’t know it yet — oh, she had him by the vitals. A strangely appropriate phrase, in fact, given the exact nature of that hold.

“I shall speak to the Deputy-Governor,” she told Venn, “but I imagine he will be glad to confirm the appointment. Welcome to my personal staff, Realgar Venn.” She extended an imperious hand towards him, and barely restrained a smile as he goggled at her, clearly unsure what he was supposed to do with it. “Remember,” she warned sharply while she had him off-balance, “your allegiance will be to me. Not to your government — not to Insecution.”

“Yes ma’am!” He stood up and gave her the archaic salute, obviously deciding that this was a good way to escape the problem of the hand altogether.

Servalan also rose to her feet, withdrawing her hand gracefully. “Return to your quarters and prepare to transfer your possessions,” she commanded. “You will be assigned new quarters with the rest of my staff.”

She watched him waddle out, scorn touching her smile. He could share with Allard, she decided at random. It would be cramped, but Allard could hardly complain and Venn was too cock-a-hoop over his supposed ‘promotion’ to notice anything for a week or two at least. Once on her personal staff, quartered within her own apartments, it would be almost impossible for him to get messages out to anyone else. The possible threat was neutered; and he might just prove very useful indeed.

She leaned over the terminal, both hands on the desk. Andra Varro’s face of fifteen years ago smiled back at her from his personnel file; patrician, clean-shaven, unscarred, with just a touch of distinguished grey at his temples. She had sworn that she would have known him anywhere. Well, she would _not_ have known him as he was now. Her mouth tightened, and she dismissed the image with a stab at the controls. “Governor’s Office,” she told the blank screen. “Federation Supreme Commander for Morrey Batracho. In person.”

She made short work of two aides who tried to stall her. “Acting-Governor — at last.... I assure you the pleasure is mine entirely.... On the contrary, Batracho, the man is a treasure. That rough exterior hides a surprising potential....

“By all means do so — and you may add the Supreme Commander’s compliments.... As it happens I have a small request to make of you... Venn — I should like him transferred to my own staff.... His pay will of course be covered by the Federation.... I quite understand. I shall leave the formal notification entirely up to you....”

Servalan cut the connection, smiling. As she had anticipated, there had been no trouble in negotiating the transfer — particularly once the Acting-Governor had made it clear that there was no need for the Intelligence section to know that Venn had left the service until after the Supreme Commander’s party had actually departed from Insecution. She wondered just how long Batracho would be able to continue appropriating the pay of a phantom Intelligence Commander before someone noticed that the man no longer existed. She would hardly have thought that Venn’s pay alone was worth having — but then quite possibly Batracho was already peculating on a grand scale. It would be interesting to compare the payroll with the actual government staffing levels on Insecution.

Allard brought her a drink, and she sipped at it delicately while dictating a brief dispatch to Headquarters. One never knew when Space Command might need to place... pressure upon a high-ranking member of the Insecution élite. Besides, Servalan believed in forward planning. There was a certain young woman on a certain ship who owed her entire career to that fact — though she did not know it. Yet.


	13. Unexpected Complications

There was pain. Pain everywhere, rolling, grinding pain, from temples to fingers to belly to knees— Lie very still, and the pain is bearable.

Dark. Blinding lights on closed eyelids. A confused murmur of voices. A throbbing that gradually became distinct from the pain; vibration, the half-heard sound of an engine. A sense of movement — of lying on a gently rocking platform. Ship-smells, vaguely medical smells. Where am I? Panic, muscles tensing — that hurt. Lie very still. Listen. Wait.

One voice, closer than the rest, was talking on and on. Hesitant, intimate, pleading, it repeated the same halting phrases over and over again: wake up, please, talk to me, you are safe, wake up, please, everything will be all right, just wake up.... It was the voice of an unknown young man; obviously distressed, but apparently a complete stranger.

Cally opened her eyes. Vague swimming shapes resolved themselves into figures, bending over her. She blinked. She was in the rear of some kind of cabin. No pressure seals on the hatch above her head. Not a spacecraft, then.

There were only two other people in the back of the cabin, she discovered as her vision cleared. The woman seemed to be a medic of some kind. The young man who was talking to her, she realised with a shock, was Amery.

He had always seemed reluctant to speak out loud. Perhaps his head hurt as much as hers did. She had heard stories of people collapsing when a link was suddenly broken, and her own head seemed to ache both inside and out. The very thought of trying to send to him brought a wave of sickness with it.

But he deserved reassurance. Her eyes seemed to have closed of their own accord. She forced them open again, wider this time. And there was something she needed to know — hackneyed, but true.

“Where am I?”

“There, now, I told you.” The medic sounded pleased with herself. “All you had to do was to talk to her. There’s nothing like the sound of a familiar voice....”

And at the same time, drowning out the woman’s inanities, overwhelming Cally’s battered mind: //I’m sorry — I’m sorry — I thought I’d got you killed — I thought you were dead — // And a great wave of unwanted emotions, pulling at her, trying to draw her down, making demands....

I never meant this to happen, Cally cried out within her own mind. I didn’t want to do this to you. She couldn’t respond in kind; couldn’t give him what he wanted from her, couldn’t shatter the idealised image he’d built up — couldn’t even protect her sick and shattered mind from the intrusion of his unshielded fervour as he tried to re-establish the link between them. She struggled to put up her own shields.

//Stop it!// she sent with all the strength she could find, too weak to try to be tactful. //Enough — leave me alone!// Then all her senses were submerged by the resulting upswell of nausea that threatened to overwhelm her.

She fought her way back to awareness again, pain accompanying each deep, deliberate breath. She remembered now. She had fallen... the Federation had been coming.... No, that was wrong. Not the Federation, not this time. She was not with Blake now. She longed suddenly, with an intensity that astonished her, to be back on the _Liberator_. Back on the ship with Vila chattering nonsense; working on the teleport with Avon in companionable silence; joining Blake and Jenna in an amiable argument over tactics in the Rest Room; even back at battle stations on the flight deck, teamed up with Gan at the rear consoles to keep track of their attackers while the _Liberator_ fought off yet another squadron of pursuit ships. Back where unexpected complications only meant people trying to kill you. Back where she _belonged_.

The medic was leaning over her again, running some kind of scanner — it looked like a Litsky osteotensator — over her body. It occurred to Cally vaguely that the metallic fabric they’d wrapped her in would be affecting the readings; but she didn’t feel up to a medical argument. Whatever was wrong with her, Gan would be able to run a diagnosis as soon as she got back to the _Liberator_ , and the surgical unit could cope. But she had to get back.

She tried to catch the medic’s eye and only succeeded in catching Amery’s instead. They had wrapped him in the same insulating fabric they had used to cover up her own soaked clothing, and he sat hunched and miserable with a tent of it draped around his shoulders, looking for all the world like some semi-mechanoid alien. The image prompted a faint smile, which she regretted immediately, guiltily, as a flicker of hope came to the hurt, bewildered eyes fixed on hers.

Her shields were up so tight that she couldn’t even hear what he was trying to tell her. She opened a corner of her mind to him.

//I’ve got the bag,// he sent tentatively. //The one with the sample case. They took it for some kind of luggage, I think....//

It hurt to turn her head, but by edging it slightly to her right she could just make out from the corner of one eye a reassuring glimpse of glossy lexane by his feet. //I’m glad,// she sent, braving the sickness. That much, at least, she could give him in all honesty.

Her movement had attracted the medic’s disapproving attention, and the woman was tutting over her and trying to wedge her still with a couple of improvised pads. Cally submitted patiently. “Where am I?” she repeated as the other woman paused to draw breath.

“No need to worry,” she was told. “We’ll get you safe and sound back to your ship, young lady, even if it is more than you deserve, getting us called out at dead of night like this, and your young man half out of his mind with worry when we went in to pick the two of you up, and lucky we did, what with the tide rising, a vicious tide is that, you’re not the first couple to get cut off in there, no not by any means —”

Another pause for breath. Cally didn’t like the sound of any of it.

“Yes, but where am I now?” she insisted. “Who are you?”

“Me?” A chuckle. “I’m Dr Nam — Nam Lendar of the Morcan Coastal Police. Talk too much, they always say —” she made an expansive gesture towards the front of the cabin, where beyond her own feet Cally could just see, through what seemed to be a force shield, an open cockpit with other figures in it. One of them waved back — “but that’s only natural, isn’t it, in a job like this one. Sedate a few pickpockets, clear up after an accident every other month, patch the tourists’ grazed knees when they fall over on the cliff — there’s not exactly a lot of work for a field-medic in the Coastal Police, now, is there, but the regs say I have to go out on every call, so what else is there for me to do but have a bit of a chat when I get the chance? And then a call comes in the middle of the night, if you please, and me with a guest in my apartment, saying there’s someone messing about on Smugglers’ Head, and they’ll likely get their fool selves into trouble, and out we have to go, and when we fairly get moored up what should happen but a young man comes stumbling out onto the old quay itself, saying there’s a dead woman down inside the caves and a lot more which none of us can make head or tail of.

“Well, we go in there all the same, and we find you, young lady, lying in a puddle, a bit of a mess but not dead yet, not by any means, so I get you straightened out and breathing nice and regular, and then carried out to the flyer so we can clear off sharpish on account of the rising tide which is almost up to the quay by this time, hang around much longer and we’ll be bobbing around in the water not over it, well I exaggerate, but you know how it is.

“So I get you laid out nicely on the bunk here and then at last I get to take a good look at you, but the more I look the less I like it — now that I’ve finally got a patient, turns out she’s too badly hurt for me to handle, with the facilities we’ve got back at Security HQ anyhow, not much call for a hospital in Morcan you see. Now there’s no cause for worry, it’s not as if you’re about to die on me, not now that I’ve got you sorted out, it just means I have to persuade the pilot to take us all the way into Blackport instead, the central hospital’s there you see — luckily the flyer’s got the range for it, takes a couple of hours though.

“Now I can see you’re off-worlders, ship-crew by the uniform, so as we’re already heading for Blackport it occurs to me to ask the young man what sort of medical unit you’ve got on the ship, knowing that most of the out-system cruisers carry half a hospital around with them; have to, I suppose, never knowing what sort of planet you’re going to end up on, not a life I’d care for I must say, but then I’m hardly one to talk, with a job like this, now am I?

“I see you’re going off to sleep now, that’s right, that’ll do you a power of good.... Well, to cut a long story short then, we’re taking you back to your ship, I’ll tell your medic what happened and they can look after you there. Wouldn’t do to get left behind in hospital, now would it? I know how you ship-crew feel about those great craft of yours....”

Cally wondered, dreamily, if Dr Nam had always been this voluble or if it was a deliberately cultivated bedside manner for soothing patients. There was something very reassuring about it; it was almost like listening to Vila. Poor Vila. She hoped she would be able to soothe his feelings down when she got back. He didn’t usually hold a grudge for long. Only a few hours since she’d seen him in the Jolly Juggler, but it felt like a lifetime. If they were going to be back in Blackport in a couple of hours then Amery would just about make it to the _Gergovia_ before she took off. That was lucky... both of them would get back to their ships....

Stray memories nagged at her sleepy mind. Ship, not ships. Dr Nam had said ‘your ship’, in the singular. Left behind? The _Liberator_ was not about to leave — and she was in orbit, so why was the medic talking about getting Cally to her ship in this flyer? It was unpressurised, hover-driven, not a shuttle. Uniform. The only uniform she was wearing was a Federation jacket —

She tried to catch hold of Dr Nam’s sleeve as she turned away, barely managed to twitch the cloth. The pain jolted the sleep out of her in an instant and a tiny sound escaped her. But the medic was turning back.

“Where? Where are we going?” Cally begged. She must sound feverish, even delirious. It didn’t matter. Just so long as the woman was prepared to humour her patient and give her a straight answer.

Dr Nam was frowning and a tranquilliser pad had appeared in her hand, but her voice was soothing. “Lie still, young lady. Everything’s all right. There’s no need to worry. We’ll make sure the two of you get back to the _Gergovia_ before she takes off.”

“No!” Cally tried to sit up. Her muscles turned to fire and water and would not hold her, and she fell back gasping. Words slipped away in the fog of pain, and would not bend to her will. “My ship... I need to get to my ship... orbit...” She was making no sense, and she knew it. Amery was watching them, looking sick. “Tell her,” she appealed to him. “Tell her!”

Something uncomfortable shifted behind his eyes, and she knew suddenly — even without the link, she _knew_ — it was more than a misunderstanding. He had deliberately allowed the police to believe that she was Federation, that the two of them belonged to the same ship. He wanted her to stay with him, and he had _lied_ —

//I can’t let you go back to that life!// His eyes were blazing to match her own. //I can’t let you die as a hunted criminal, shot down on some frontier world, crushed in the aftermath of some explosion. You deserve more than that — you’re made of finer stuff, and you know it. You can start a new life in the Federation. I can protect you — I’ve got privileges — I’ll do everything possible to help. No-one need ever know who you used to be. You can create instead of destroying, use your skills to help instead of to kill, expose corruption if you find it. It will work. I know it will.//

Again he tried to re-establish the link, and she repulsed him blindly. Sweat was pouring down her face, and Dr Nam was babbling something, her hands cold and moist on Cally’s forehead. She could no longer see him — the medic’s body was in between — but she could feel the hurt and the blinding honesty and passionate belief in the torrent of thoughts that poured over her.

//You don’t have to stay with me. You can go to another Sector — go to the other side of the galaxy — I’ll protect you anyway, as much as I can. I’ll never come near you again if you don’t want me to. I just want you to be safe and happy — can’t you see that? I want to be able to do something for you — I want to give you things — I want to help — //

By taking me away from the _Liberator_? Cally cried out silently, impotently. By cutting me off from all my friends — by making it look as if I have betrayed them? I want to go back. I don’t want to go with you, can’t _you_ see that?

She tried desperately to speak, but she was floating away. It wasn’t the medic’s hand cold on her forehead, it was the tranquilliser pad; she could feel the treacherous chemical lethargy spreading through her and her eyes were too heavy to open, her jaw was slack and would not obey her. She was being carried off against her will, and no-one would ever even know....

//Blake — // She had little strength left. She poured it all into that last instinctive appeal for help. //Blake — they’re taking me away — the _Gergovia_ — //


	14. An Officer of the Old School

Chu was not a particularly good-humoured man. Never had been, even in his prime when he’d finally achieved his boyhood ambition, to command a Fleet battlecruiser. That had been the pinnacle of his career — he’d never aspired to Warden rank, and the inevitable politics that went with it. Although his sturdy old _Volta_ , even in her long-vanished youth, would never have matched up to the power of the _Newton_ and her ilk — giant strides had been made in spaceship design over the last generation — she had seen action in her day, had even distinguished herself, despite her age and lack of modern armament and shielding, during the ‘41 Mutiny when the Galactic Second Fleet had backed Lanier’s bid for power. He’d been proud enough to be appointed to command her, but it hadn’t mellowed him. If anything, the additional responsibility and the constant scheming among the junior officers — far too many junior officers on board a battlecruiser, in Chu’s jaundiced opinion, and all of them under-employed unless the ship was actually at battle stations — had exhausted his slender reserves of patience and made him shorter-tempered than ever. Boyhood ambitions weren’t always worth the winning.

He still remembered the _Volta_ with affection, though. Despite what she’d done to him. Despite the endless back-biting. Despite the insinuation that he’d only got the command through Family influence — a double insult, that, unless they really believed that the best the Chu Family could have achieved for him was a small and elderly battlecruiser, however protective her captain might feel over her. And at least a Family background made sure you knew how to behave like an officer, which was more than he could say for half the Academy-trained Beta brats with more conceit than manners — like that Tarrant whelp. Deeta, wasn’t it? — who thought that passing the supposedly merit-driven aptitude tests to make it into the F.S.A. somehow proved them to be more talented and more deserving of success than officers of the old school. There’d always been officers who’d worked their way up from the ranks — but that was different.

Take Lanuv, now — she was a low Beta but she’d made it into the Federation Space Academy somehow, and certain powerful persons must have taken an influence in the proceedings for her to have lasted three years there, let alone passed out successfully at the far end of that. Even as junior Pilot Officer she was a disgrace to the profession, in his opinion — but that decision wasn’t his to take, any more.

The _Volta_ ’s ancient systems had cost him his Fleet career, eight years ago, when unexpected turbulence had fractured shielding on some of the drive ducts, with the side-effect of bathing a segment of the ship in an asynchronised burst of degenerative radiation — he didn’t recall the details, he’d never had the tech training they seemed to drill into all cadets these days. Six of the crew had been affected, and two officers. One of them had been Chu.

He’d never been conscious of any ill-effects from the experience, himself; but they’d put him through a battery of compulsory tests, and then taken away his command. Perceptible cognitive damage, they’d told him. Serious delays in reaction, possible paranoia, distorted judgement. He’d never serve in line of battle again. He had thought of appealing — with his connections, he could have taken it to the highest levels — but to their eyes, that would just have been proof of the diagnosis. He wasn’t going to give them that satisfaction.

And so after that single troubled year on the bridge of the _Volta_ , it had been downhill all the way, getting sourer and sourer with each year that passed. He’d been an embarrassment to the Fleet. They’d wanted to retire him, but he’d refused, so they’d kicked him over to civilian commands where his supposedly impaired judgment was evidently reckoned to be a more acceptable risk. He’d been shunted from duty to duty, growing more cynical, less scrupulous, as the years went by. The _Gergovia_ looked set to be his last ship, unless she too was taken away from him before his time was up. He no longer cared.

The _Volta_ had gone, too, now. She’d been scheduled to be broken up, last year — she was the one ship he still bothered to keep track of — but she’d just disappeared, quietly, on what would have been her last tour of duty. Some final, lethal, malfunction, perhaps; or some uncharted space hazard. Ships did disappear, regularly, even in this day and age. Space was so big, and humanity by comparison still so puny....

Chu became belatedly aware that he had been staring his junior officer out of countenance for several minutes. Young Amery wasn’t a regular member of the crew — the boy had been part of the scientific team they’d picked up at the Central Science Complex — but by now he would undoubtedly have picked up the prevailing accounts of ‘surly old Chu’ that had spread throughout the ship. The Commander — the nearest civilian equivalent they’d been able to give him to his old rank — was well aware of how his crew saw him and had taken a certain grim pleasure in fostering the image, making sure his bite lived up to his bark. He didn’t get many other pleasures these days... and it helped to cover up the occasional lapses of attention that were getting more and more frequent. He was reluctantly being forced to face the fact that the medical board’s decision had been justified, and it did nothing at all to improve his temper.

“What is it?” he snapped at the youngster. “What do you want?” He had always hated early-morning take-offs, even when, as on this occasion, ‘early morning’ in planetary time happened to fall towards the end of the ship’s day. Spaceports were supposed to operate twenty-four hours a day — or the local equivalent thereof — but long and jaundiced experience had convinced him that service was always slackest just before dawn, and accidents twice as likely. In any case, most of the _Gergovia_ ’s crew had spent the ‘day’ taking full advantage of Blackport’s famous facilities and were now suffering the inevitable after-effects while the rest, including himself, were on the night-watch and had only just woken up. As far as his body clock was concerned, the start of the fourth shift _was_ early morning, and everyone else was going to pay for it.

Amery looked shocked. “Sir — the woman —”

Oh yes. The young science officer had turned up only half an hour before take-off procedures were due to start, well after the end of his shore-leave, and had been sent in to Chu to be hauled over the carpet as per the Commander’s standing orders. True, he was the first defaulter for several months who hadn’t come back blind drunk, but Chu supposed that was due to the alien’s physiological inability rather than through lack of trying. According to the rest of the returning shore-party, he’d last been seen sinking it down at a tremendous rate.

But it turned out that, clean against one of Chu’s _other_ standing orders, he’d brought a woman back with him. The fact that she was flat on her back and apparently out for the count wasn’t in itself entirely unprecedented, but the fact that he had a medic in tow who claimed she was seriously injured and wanted to put her in the ship’s surgical unit was certainly a novel twist.

And then the young science officer had had the nerve to try to talk him into taking her onto the ship’s payroll. Very eloquent he’d been about it, too, for someone who normally seemed to think himself too special to deign to talk to mere humans — Chu hadn’t lost the habit of keeping a wary eye on his junior officers, and that boy had been putting backs up left, right and centre among the regular crew.

Chu still couldn’t believe he’d let himself be talked into giving the idea serious consideration. Amery had claimed his mystery woman was trained spaceship crew, and a communications tech. Claimed she’d saved his life, and he’d managed to repay her by endangering hers. Claimed, most bizarrely of all, that she was an alien too.

Well, once the medic had got her hooked up to the surgical unit, that one had been easy enough to check out — and to Chu’s amazement, the few simple tests he’d run behind the medic’s back had demonstrated pretty conclusively that whatever the woman was, she wasn’t human. She was Auron, the same as Amery — whatever _that_ was, he’d never quite got round to finding out, except that the boy was a telepath, which was apparently his excuse for not talking to people.

He had only ever had her brought into the surgical unit in the first place so that he could pull the chain on what was fast threatening to become an elaborate leg-pull of the kind that had crews sniggering up their sleeves for weeks. He’d had those before, and no matter how savage the punishments you imposed once you got to the bottom of it, a crew that knew it could fool its captain was a crew on the verge of total indiscipline. But somehow, once she was under treatment by the auto-doctor, once he’d seen the diagnostics on the internal injuries, above all once he’d started to credit Amery’s story, he couldn’t just order her unplugged from the medical equipment and thrown off his ship as he’d intended.

The boy had ulterior motives, of course. You could tell that from the way he looked at her, let alone the way he talked about her when he let his guard slip. Pity she just missed out on being good-looking, though aliens probably had different standards on that sort of thing. Bit skinny for his taste, but then Amery was skinny enough for two himself, so perhaps they all looked like that.

It was true she didn’t look like a port girl. From the things the young Auron had said — and, more importantly, from the things he _hadn’t_ said — Chu had a pretty shrewd idea she was some kind of political on the run. As a good Federation man, he ought to hand the pair of them over to Central Security at once; but even after all these years, he was far more Fleet than Federation, and the Fleet didn’t like politics or politicians. Plenty of good men would never have dreamed of enlisting in the Fleet if they hadn’t had Central Security on their tail; and the Fleet would have been the poorer without them.

And then there was that wonderful line the boy had dreamed up about one telepath on his own being about as useful as a comm handset without a transmitter... and a matched pair being worth their weight in gold. With the price of gold at its present levels that would make these two Aurons worth about the price of a whole solar system, skinny as they were. Certainly if the authorities got wind of it they’d whisk her off for some kind of top-secret project — they’d never let that kind of asset stay on the _Gergovia_.

He couldn’t believe he’d seriously allowed himself to consider keeping her. But here he was, with the young man hanging on his lips, pleading with him with every glance.

“Sir —”

Chu shrugged. “All right. If she’s all you say I’ll take her on the roll. Unofficially. She doesn’t register on the computers and she doesn’t get paid. But at the end of this voyage she gets an official discharge and proof of identity that’ll get her a place on any other ship she cares to name. Fair?

“The auto-doc should have finished with her in a few hours. Once she’s up she can go down to work with Medda in communications. Medda’s always claiming she needs an assistant. If she can do the job, she stays. Otherwise I report her to Central Security at the next port of call.” He watched Amery’s pale face go sheet white, with cynical amusement. Yes, this one was political all right.

“What’s her name?”

A perceptible pause. “Istan.” The first lie he’d heard from the boy. In a way that was encouraging. If he was that bad a liar than Chu could place more trust in the rest of the crazy story. He raised a weary eyebrow.

“Really?”

The Auron flushed, misunderstanding. “We only have one name each, sir —”

Chu really wasn’t in the mood for a lecture on alien customs. He cut his junior officer short. “Istan it is, then. Now get to your work — which means keeping out of my way while we take off, along with the rest of your scientific specialists. And I don’t want to find you shirking your duties in order to pay attentions to your lady friend, telepath or no telepath. Clear?”

The boy had gone white again. Chu frowned. Surely he hadn’t snapped that hard?

“I do not think... that is likely to be a problem. Sir.”

The Commander scowled and dismissed him. Either the woman would work out or she wouldn’t. Probably she wouldn’t. In which case he could get rid of her without any evidence that she had ever been on the ship at all. He glanced at the pale, strong-boned face again, mildly curious. Even unconscious, she had a taut, wary look. Definitely political. Well, she could just keep her politics to herself on this ship, unless she wanted to start learning how to breathe vacuum. He’d given her a chance. That was all.

And as for that fool of a boy — Did he really think he’d managed to smuggle that enormous brown bag on board unnoticed in all the fuss? Even if you brought a woman on a hover-stretcher in with you, you had to be sharper than that to get one past Commander Chu. He’d order a snap inspection of all cabins tomorrow — there had been a few other suspicious packages coming up the exit-ramp, and while Blackport might have a notoriously lax attitude to smuggling, the Federation in general was strongly opposed to individuals turning a pretty profit by dodging duties. More to the point, as far as Chu was concerned, the Fleet, which had to hunt down the elusive free-traders at a disproportionate cost in men and ships, was strongly opposed, and he wasn’t having contraband goods on board his ship.

He took one last look at the slender alien woman who lay so still and totally vulnerable, her body half-hidden by the mass of equipment the medic had coupled up. A faint tremor ran through the deck-plates under his feet, and unconsciously he relaxed as his ship began to come to life around him, dormant systems powering-up, gantries and service-links withdrawing from outside. He’d been a spacer too long. Planets were just gravity-traps — only out there, between the stars, was he in his element. These days, the only ship he could get was a clumsy old tub with a belly full of scientists, but he’d take her out as often as he could in the few years left to him before the medical board grounded him permanently.

Chu snarled and stumped out of the sickbay without a backward glance. He still had the final two defaulters to deal with before the ship took off. They’d arrived back even later than Amery. He hadn’t told the boy that, of course. Bad for discipline. Commander Chu was an officer of the old school.


	15. Cobweb and Supposition

Blake looked as if he hadn’t slept all night. Knowing Blake, he probably hadn’t. Jenna grudgingly absolved him of deliberately setting out to martyr himself — and other people — it was just that human frailties tended to come a long way down his list of priorities.

To her critical eye, the flight deck looked decidedly unkempt this morning. She removed with distaste the empty plate someone had absent-mindedly left balanced across the controls on her console, and leaned over to check the pilot’s read-outs. Whoever had moved the _Liberator_ during the night hadn’t made a particularly good job of it. Left to himself, _Zen_ could have set up a better parking orbit than this. Only the orbital drift compensators were keeping the ship steady, at the cost of a constant drain to the energy banks. Admittedly the power loss was so slight that it would take days to reduce Bank 1 by even five per cent, but the unnecessary use of the compensators irked her professional pride.

She reached out and cut the power. A couple more adjustments boosted the ship into a stable orbit, and she sighed and set her hands on her hips, surveying the rest of the instruments. Nothing was quite the way she had left it.

“Perfectionist,” Blake said softly from behind her. Her head came up sharply, but the weary smile in his eyes disarmed her, and after a moment she reached out to touch his arm gently in acknowledgement. Down at the front of the flight deck, she heard Avon put a sharp question to Gan.

She had been somewhat surprised to discover that Cally was still missing. If anything, Cally had always given her the impression of being rather over-conscientious. Admittedly the other woman didn’t yet know about Blake’s latest scheme, but even so.... Now if it had only been Avon who had chosen to disappear, no-one — except possibly Blake, who seemed to have managed to retain a certain naïve faith in the man — would have been in the least astonished.

She hadn’t been seriously concerned until Blake mentioned Cally’s final cryptic appeal, and the unnerving sending that had preceded it. Reading between the lines — and Jenna flattered herself that she had always found Blake fairly easy to read — she guessed that Cally’s last message had initially come as an overwhelming relief, proof that she was at least alive. But that had been well over six hours ago, and in the time since, neither Blake nor Gan had succeeded in finding any trace of her.

“I assume you’ve tried the prisons?” she suggested now, glancing up at Blake again.

“Gan thought of that.” He was still watching the group at the front of the flight deck. “He got Orac to pull the data on every arrest made over the whole planet in the last few hours, and we went over it together. There were two or three who might conceivably have been Cally from the description — right size, right colouring, about the right age — even the pictures on file could just about have been her, though I wouldn’t have believed that any image could have been such poor quality —”

Jenna chuckled rather bitterly. “You have led a sheltered life, haven’t you, Blake? Perhaps I should get your useful friend Orac to find you some of the various pictures of me scattered around the Federation’s computer systems and see what you’d make of those. If you could just talk him into wiping them altogether, you’d be doing the whole human race a favour.”

Blake smiled faintly but made no other response, and Jenna sighed. “I take it none of your suspects turned out to be Cally?”

“No....” Blake rubbed the back of one hand across his eyes and tried to stifle a yawn. “We got co-ordinates for the relevant cells and Gan went down to check them out. It seemed the simplest way at the time.”

Both Jenna’s eyebrows flew upwards, but she made no comment. “We’ve tried the prisons,” Blake was repeating wearily, “we’ve tried the hospitals — the medical computers have got enough data on all of us by now for a positive identification, and Cally’s not quite human; she’d stand out like a mis-phased transmitter coil — we’ve tried the guest-list of every establishment between Blackport and Morcan, and every other source of computer records either of us could think of. The only trace we’ve found of her all night is — this.”

Jenna followed him in silence to the edge of the flight deck, where two halves of a twisted ring lay cupped in the hemisphere of Zen’s analyser, like the war-battered relics in some trophy case. With a jolt she recognised the remains of a teleport bracelet.

The analyser dome went dark beneath Blake’s hands as he lifted the remnants carefully free. “Zen found traces of blood.” His tone was studiously neutral. “Auron blood — Cally’s.”

“We know it’s Cally’s bracelet — no-one else has lost one!” Jenna snapped, choosing to misunderstand him. “Where did you find it?”

“In an alley.” Gan had come up behind them unnoticed. His face was as weary as Blake’s, and for all his bulk he looked somehow diminished. He claimed the bracelet from Blake, turning it gently between his big hands, remembering.

“She could be hidden anywhere —” Blake swung round to face Jenna. “It’s like sifting through sand. We don’t know who took her. We don’t know why. We don’t know whether she was double-crossed, or attacked, or ambushed.... I can’t find her, Jenna.” He looked exhausted, closer to defeat than she had ever known him.

We have begun to demand miracles as our due, Jenna thought wryly, seeing him clearly for the first time in months. We are in danger of beginning to believe our own legend. Reality hurts, Blake, doesn’t it?

She reached out and took the ruined teleport bracelet from Gan, tempted for a moment to toss it in the direction of the recycler. Sighing, she set it down neatly in the exact centre of Cally’s vacant flight console, aware of Blake watching. She met his eyes deliberately, her own cool gaze assessing the troubled brown. “What of Insecution now, Blake?”

“A good question.” Avon and a still-subdued Vila had followed Gan. “You wanted us all back here by the morning, Blake, whether it was convenient or not. You became quite... insistent. Now that the morning has come, may I take it that we are about to leave? Or has the matter suddenly become rather less urgent than you seemed to believe last night? Are we going on your mercy mission, or are you planning to hang around here waiting for someone who won’t be coming back?”

Jenna could almost feel the shock that ran through Blake. All his attention was suddenly focused on Avon. “What do you mean by that?”

“Not what you think.” A hint of contempt. “For one thing, what makes you so certain Cally has been ‘hidden’ at all? Why couldn’t she just have _chosen_ to disappear?”

“Are you out of your mind — ?” Gan moved convulsively, and Avon spared him a brief glance.

“A condition with which _you_ are, of course, more familiar than any of us.” Something that was not a smile showed for a moment on Avon’s face as Gan flinched. His eyes returned to Blake.

“Cally deliberately evades Gan and Jenna. A little later she conveniently loses her teleport bracelet. The damage to that bracelet is consistent with nothing more dramatic than being trodden on, by the way, and there is at least one clear heel-mark visible in the exposed circuitry. Judging by the size and shape, I should say that the boot in question almost certainly belonged to Cally.”

“Are you seriously suggesting that Cally destroyed her own teleport bracelet?”

“I am suggesting nothing, Blake. I am merely informing you of my observations — observations which you had ample opportunity to make for yourself.” Against her will, Jenna found her own eyes being drawn down to the betraying remnants on the console behind them. Could Cally — ? No. It made no sense.

“With the bracelet destroyed,” Avon continued, “we were unable either to make contact with Cally or to bring her back to the ship. In fact, if Vila had not happened to encounter her, we should know nothing except what she chose to tell us. As it is, we know that Cally has, at the very least, been highly selective with the truth. Most significantly, she totally omitted to mention the fact that the ‘scientist from Auron’ in whose company Vila found her is apparently an officer in active Federation service. That fact, like her own appearance in Federation uniform, is not necessarily in itself of any great import; but her decision to conceal it from the rest of us is more than a little... disquieting.“

He glanced around from face to face as if trying to gauge the degree of disquiet produced by his words. His own expression was, as ever, unreadable.

“From that point onwards the only direct knowledge we have of her comes from Blake’s account of the telepathic communications he alone was privileged to receive, and of his experiences at the section of cliff known by the colourful designation of ‘Smugglers’ Head’. While Blake has not yet deigned to give me a verbatim report of either —” Blake tried to interrupt, but was overridden — “I gather from Gan that Blake was first asked _not_ to follow Cally to Morcan, in a piece of elementary reverse psychology whose result even Vila could have predicted, then attracted to the cliff by the triggering of an alarm of the most primitive type which could easily have been disabled or bypassed without any trouble, as in fact Blake himself demonstrated. He was led through the caves by a very conveniently placed trail — that at least should have made you suspicious, Blake —” Jenna, watching them both, saw Blake’s sudden sharp movement of acknowledgement, and the frown deepened between her own brows — “to a point where Cally’s discarded gun was used as a prop to manipulate him into believing her dead. When a pathetic ‘final message’ came from Cally he was thus in a frame of mind to accept it unquestioningly — despite the fact that Cally ostensibly had no reason to believe him to be anywhere in the vicinity. It rings false from beginning to end, Blake. Hasn’t it even occurred to you that Cally is the bait in a trap?”

Blake was staring at him, dark brows level, jaw set. “Very eloquent, Avon. Perhaps you should have chosen to make your career in the Justice Department — I’m sure Alta Morag and others like her would have appreciated your ability to build a damning case out of cobweb and supposition. I have just two questions: if this is a trap, then why are all the rest of us still free? And what could the Federation possibly have to offer Cally that would induce her to betray us all?”

“There is no way to know for certain if this is a trap or not — until it is sprung. I for one would prefer not to be here when that happens.” Avon glanced up at Zen, then around the flight deck. “One possibility is that the scheme was aimed at catching not just you, but the _Liberator_ — which, propaganda value aside, would be a far more valuable acquisition — and that for some reason it has not succeeded. Perhaps there were more clues planted in Morcan which were intended to allow you to ‘locate’ Cally, luring the _Liberator_ into a short-handed voyage to some nearby system where it could be ambushed and destroyed or captured at the Federation’s pleasure — in which case only your own incompetence has saved you.

“Another possibility is that Cally’s disappearance was engineered not to trap you, but to delay you here on this planet in a fruitless search — which would suggest that they specifically wish to keep us away from Insecution, and it might therefore be worthwhile to make all speed there.

“The most likely scenario is that the trap was not designed to close until we were _all_ on board the _Liberator_. Since that is currently the case, I strongly suggest that we leave, and leave now, before it is too late.”

His eyes met Jenna’s for the first time, and the message in them was clear to read. Jenna hesitated, her feelings for Blake pulling her one way, self-preservation urging her the other. “You haven’t answered Blake’s second question. How could the Federation persuade Cally, of all people, to betray us? And when is this supposed to have happened? Gan and I are the only ones who saw Cally run out of that bar, and whatever you understood him to say, I can tell you now that Cally wasn’t acting when she staged that fit. And I can’t believe that Cally’s been biding her time for weeks or months, waiting for a chance to betray Blake into a chase after her. She couldn’t do it, Avon. She’s not sophisticated enough to act a part and keep it up for that long.” She looked up at him from under lowered eyelids in mock-humility. “We’re not all up to your standards of duplicity.”

For a split second she thought she saw something move behind Avon’s eyes; then he had himself in hand again, turning to face her, his hands clasped casually behind his back. “Cally is a poor liar,” he acknowledged in a tone of silky reason. “And if she wished to betray Blake, she could have done so easily on Aristo. No, I think Cally was lured out from that bar by someone — or some device — that could manipulate her mind, captured, and then forced or induced to co-operate. The Federation can be very persuasive.” He smiled. “Or perhaps, Jenna, once she saw it was hopeless — she decided to take the opportunity to change sides.”

Avon, I’ll kill you for that —

There was a heavy weight on her arm — both arms. Jenna felt Gan release her as the first blind rage went out of her. Avon had not even flinched. She watched him, breathing hard, still aching to claw the mocking smile from his face, wipe out the memory of her own betrayal.... “I should have detonated that collar of yours while I had the chance.”

“Ah, but Blake would never have forgiven you.” That smile again. “More to the point, nor would Tarvin.”

It was Blake who caught her arm this time, pulling her back against him. “She saved us, Avon!”

“By changing sides again.” Avon’s eyes dismissed Jenna, rose to confront Blake. “Now why do I not find that reassuring, I wonder?”

I didn’t do it for you, Avon. She held herself tense, pinned by the circle of Blake’s arm, and remembered the smile in Blake’s eyes as they had fought to turn the ship away at the last moment, the brush of his fingers against her cheek, the look that said: I knew you would never betray us! If Tarvin had not pushed her too far — would she have gone through with it, helped the Amagon to sell them all to the Federation and claim the bounty? She still didn’t know. Blake would never understand that. It was his attraction — and his vulnerability. Avon understood her only too well.

Blake released her. Avon was watching him steadily. “Do you really want to know what the Federation has to offer Cally, Blake? Other than her life, and freedom from being hunted? Well, now —”

“INFORMATION.” Instinctively Jenna, like the others, turned to face Zen. Gan, beside her, had taken a deep breath. “SEARCH PATTERN NOW COMPLETED. RESULTS AS FOLLOWS —”

“Zen, hold.” Blake frowned, glancing around his crew, from face to face. “Gan? What search pattern?”

“I asked Zen to run a name check — hours ago — to try to find Cally. Every named settlement on every planet. It has to be a name or a codeword, Blake. It can’t be anything else.”

“Every placename in the galaxy...” Blake’s expression was half-amused, half-appalled. “Gan, that would take hours....”

“Evidently it has.” Jenna’s voice was cool. “Zen, report results of search pattern.”

“RESULTS AS FOLLOWS,” Zen repeated patiently with exactly the same intonation. “NEGATIVE. NO ASTROGRAPHICAL INFORMATION FOUND. THERE ARE NO KNOWN PLANETS, PLANETARY BODIES OR ARTIFICIAL SATELLITES WHOSE NAMES MATCH THE SEARCH PARAMETERS. THERE ARE NO RECORDED CITIES, INHABITED BASES, MANNED STATIONS OR GROUND SETTLEMENTS OF ANY SIZE WHOSE NAMES MATCH THE SEARCH PARAMETERS. CONCLUSION: ‘GERGOVIA’ IS NOT A VALID PLACENAME.”

Long before the depressing catalogue of negatives had finished, Gan had spread his hands apologetically, shaking his head in resignation. “I’m sorry, Blake. It was worth a try.”

Vila was looking from one to the other, apparently bemused. Only Jenna saw the curious expression that passed fleetingly over Avon’s features at Zen’s final words. For a moment she thought the was about to say something; then he appeared to change his mind.

“What is it, Avon?” She made the question deliberately blunt. “I suppose you know something the rest of us don’t.”

“Many things.” It was a reflex response. Avon seemed strangely reluctant to demonstrate his superior knowledge.

Blake pushed past her, caught hold of Avon, who stiffened. “Avon, what exactly do you know?”

Cold eyes narrowed. “Enough to be aware that you cannot solve a problem by throwing brute computer resources at a poorly-phrased question.”

“So Gergovia _is_ a place?” Blake pressed him.

“It was, once. For what that’s worth.” Avon freed himself from Blake’s grasp with suppressed violence. “Instead of wasting computing time with your pre-conceived assumptions, you would have done better to ask someone qualified to give you the answer.”

“Like you?”

“Like Jenna, for example,” Avon said softly, and Jenna’s head came up sharply as Blake turned to stare at her.

“Me?”

Avon had clasped his hands behind his back again. His tone was almost conversational. “You told me once that every pilot needs to know his enemy — do you remember? How your first captain made you learn the Fleet List — ship ratings, armament, sensor ranges and all?”

Jenna nodded, reluctantly, searching his face for signs that he was amusing herself at her expense. She did remember that evening. Avon had been in a strange mood, encouraging her to talk. For once he had seemed almost human, and she’d discovered he could be good company when he chose. She’d spent some time wondering, afterwards, just what he’d been after....

“The old man was right. Once I got my own ship I used to make all my pilots do the same.” She’d been able to recite the whole Fleet List, once. Hadn’t tried that particular trick in years — not since the night she’d been out to impress that new red-headed crewman of Handar’s. It had worked, too; and she’d learnt the hard way that any man who could be fascinated by that kind of recital wasn’t the type she was interested in.

She shook her hair back, tilting her head. “Stop playing games, Avon. What are you trying to get at?”

Avon glanced up at Blake. “Just what did Cally tell you, Blake? Word for word?”

For a second Jenna thought Blake would refuse. But he drew a breath and recited, stiffly: “Blake... they’re taking me away... the Gergovia —” Realisation broke over them both at the same moment. “Jenna — he’s right — a _ship_ —”

She laughed back at him, giddy with sudden comprehension. “The _Gallic_ -class. They were scientific ships — a mobile research station in miniature, or that was the idea. Only six were ever built; I think the _Gergovia_ was the second. She must be ancient. I’d no idea they were still space-worthy!”

“All of forty years old,” Avon said drily, and Blake turned on him.

“This is hardly your field — so how do you suddenly come to know so much about obsolete spaceships? And why didn’t you mention it earlier?”

“If you had seen fit to explain to the rest of us what you were trying to do, instead of spending hours attempting to track down the name given to the city of one dead people in the language of another, I might have been able to do so.

“As to my own knowledge — as it happens, I was investigating along different lines entirely. Since I had been given to understand last night that we were about to leave, in order to concern ourselves with affairs on Insecution —” the eyes that met Blake’s were ironic — “and since you appeared to be otherwise occupied, I felt it might be prudent or even profitable to establish some local contacts and make further enquiries about _lerva_ -plague.”

“If you are referring to that overblown madam in the green turban,” Jenna said sharply, “I got the impression that most of the ‘contact’ being made was on her side.”

“That overblown madam, as you so delicately put it, happens to run the most extensive escort network in Blackport. What her girls can’t find out isn’t worth knowing. In return for the major share of my winnings at the card-table, she undertook to find out everything she could about the Insecution scheme, over and above what Shemezz chose to tell Blake.”

“Not such a profitable evening after all then,” Jenna observed, frowning. “That seems uncommonly... selfless on your part.”

Avon’s smile failed to reach his eyes. “Perhaps.”

“What did you find out?” Blake broke in. His voice sharpened. “And how much did you tell her?”

“Blake, I have as much regard for my own skin as you do — almost certainly more. I told her as little as possible. In particular, I conspicuously failed to mention either my own name or the name of my ship. They understand these transactions, at Blackport.” He paused. “I made contact with her this morning, before we came back up to the _Liberator_. Most of what she told me duplicates Shemezz’ sources, with the exception of the suppressant drug scheme which is obviously a rather better-kept secret than the rest of it. However, one of the things I was able to learn was the name and schedule of the ship that is actually transporting the anti-virus —”

“The _Gergovia_.” Blake’s eyes were bleak. “She was here last night, at the same time as we were —”

“Precisely. And she left on schedule. Several hours ago.”

“With Cally on board!”

“Perhaps.”

Blake swept Avon’s equivocation aside with an impatient gesture. “She mentioned a ‘new drug’ — do you remember? We all assumed at the time she was referring to some kind of recreational narcotic — but she must have stumbled onto this Insecution business independently.”

Avon remained silent. “She must have!” Blake insisted. “It’s too much of a coincidence that she could have ended up on the _Gergovia_ otherwise.”

“If I have learned anything at all in the last year and a half, Blake, it is that there is no such thing as ‘too much of a coincidence’. However, assuming that Cally’s information was accurate and assuming that was in fact what she was trying to say —”

“Wait a minute!” Vila came to life unexpectedly. “Ten minutes ago you were trying to convince Blake that Cally was working with the Federation. Now you’re assuming that she’s telling the truth. What’s going on, Avon? Has Cally betrayed us or hasn’t she? It makes a big difference, you know.”

Avon froze, and seemed to withdraw into himself. “You have access to the same facts as the rest of us, Vila. Use them.” He turned his back on them all and left the flight deck in silence.

Vila stared after him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means he doesn’t know,” Gan supplied, folding his arms.

“Or doesn’t want to say.” Jenna sighed and leaned back on the nearest console, surveying the other three. Vila’s eyes shifted nervously, and he was fiddling with the hem of his jacket. Gan faced her squarely, but he looked crumpled and utterly weary. The flush of nervous energy that had been animating Blake seemed to have drained with Avon’s departure, and he was supporting himself with one hand on the wall beside Zen. She sighed again.

“Blake, are we going after this ship?”

Blake pulled himself together for a moment. “Either Cally’s on board or someone wants us to think she is. And the _Gergovia_ is carrying the anti-virus to be used on Insecution. I’d say that’s three good reasons for going after her. Better stay at extreme sensor range once you find her though, until we find out whether she’s got a military escort. Avon probably knows — see if you can get it out of him.” He swayed, caught himself.

“If they have got Cally, I don’t think they’ll kill her. They’ll try to use her as a hostage — or as bait, as Avon said. We all know Cally’s not the one they really want.”

Given the choice, Jenna thought, watching him, we can afford to lose Cally. We can’t afford to lose you.

A tiny sneaking thought suggested that without Blake’s campaign against the Federation they would all be free to live in safety and comparative ease, but she shrugged it aside. She had spent almost her entire adult life pitted against the Federation: for profit, for Blake, for bare survival — what difference did it make? Life in safety was never going to be an option; not for the notorious Jenna Stannis, at least.

She pushed herself upright and made her way round to her own console to lay in the course, glancing up. “I’ll take the first watch. Vila, clear up the flight deck. Blake — Gan —” She fumbled in a hip-pocket for the bottle of knock-out drops she had used on Vila last night, got them out at last and tossed them towards Gan, who caught them with surprising deftness.

Then frowned. “What —”

Blake yawned, and grimaced. “I think it’s a hint.” He yawned again, caught Jenna’s eye, and grinned. “Sleep. Yes. Definitely.”


	16. Part 2: Istan, Chapter 16 A Fresh Start

The duct was narrow, and never intended for access during flight. Junior communications tech ‘Istan’ bit her lip, and eased her body a fraction further round, just enough for her clutching fingers to grip the projecting flange that had been stubbornly out of reach. She pulled, hard, and felt the lip of the access hatch scrape painfully along her leg as she disappeared deeper into the bowels of the ship. Much further, and she would have to rely on Medda to pull her out again — if she could.

Her own body was blocking out the light. Painstakingly, she used her free arm to worm and nudge the portable beamer back to its previous position, riding at her shoulder. Her hair was gathered tightly under a technician’s cap, but the faint static charge on the cool-glowing surface attracted clinging wisps of it across the side of her face, and she flinched irritably. It had taken her nearly ten minutes to get this far, and her cheek was already smeared with grease and ancient grime where she had tried to brush the tickling strands clear against the side of the duct. She was beginning to envy Medda’s close-clipped iron-grey bristles.

The senior communications tech tapped her below the knee, the only part of her body that still showed beyond the hatch. “Can you see it yet? Branch junction Gamma-two-eighty — should be red-coded.”

There was no way that Medda could ever have squeezed in here beyond the bulkheads, and she was making the most of her new apprentice’s slender frame and long reach to catch up with a backlog of inaccessible repairs that were too urgent to wait for the ship’s next overhaul. She was scrupulously fair — she had waited for the auto-doctor to pronounce ‘Istan’ totally healed before removing her from the sick-bay, and she never asked for the impossible — but she drove her junior tech to the limits of her abilities.

Istan peered ahead, down the narrow slot between the main cabin-floor bracing-members and the heavy stringers that ran along the hull at this point. Loops of archaic shielded cable obscured her vision and showered her with accumulated metal fragments as she brushed against them. She used the hand outstretched in front of her to hold them aside, searched for the more modern sealed transmission units that carried the faulty line she was trying to trace.

The _Gergovia_ was a patchwork of old and new, layer upon layer of disused and obsolete connections behind the sterile walls betraying the process of constant upgrading that ensured she carried the last word in sophisticated laboratory equipment within her battered and aging hull. There could not have been a more absolute contrast to the almost organic elegance of the _Liberator_ , where the sort of fault-tracing she was trying to carry out would routinely have been taken care of within seconds by the auto-repair system. The repair system on the _Gergovia_ was too primitive to be effective on anything beyond the basic equipment that kept the hull flying, or to do more than maintain the original systems of the ship as built. Damage to any of the replacement systems — comprising by now more than four-fifths of the ship’s vital functions — simply failed to register. The result was a bewildering and inefficient of patched and botched repairs, carried out between refits by those small enough or slim enough to gain access and hence, depressingly often, by those too junior or inexperienced to complete the job as it should have been done. The _Liberator_ ’s clean white systems had corresponded to the imagined interiors of the spaceships in the dreams of the child she had been, down on Auron. She supposed that in that case the scarred circuits of the _Gergovia_ must represent some return to reality.

Wedged deep inside a Federation ship, deep inside Federation territory, heading for a colony soon to renew its links with Earth as part of the Terran Federation, Cally let her head sink onto her outstretched arm, suddenly, desperately, homesick. She had missed Auron for so long, but that loss had been at least partly by her own choice, and on Saurian Major she had found solace in human companions. Then she had lost them, only to find new purpose in Blake’s campaign and new friendship with him and his crew. Now she had lost that, managed to lose even the half-protective, half-exasperated relationship that had grown up between herself and Amery — as she had seen it, at least — and she was utterly alone on a ship of strangers. No-one was cruel to her, or unkind, or showed anything at all beyond impatient indifference. On board the _Liberator_ she had always been a little isolated; accepted, trusted, but different. On the Civil Administration ship _Gergovia_ her isolation was unbearable.

She had discovered on her first day that the ship’s crew had divided into two parties; the regular crew like Medda and Commander Chu, who supervised day-to-day running, and the scientific crew who staffed the various laboratories, changing from voyage to voyage. Each party looked down on the other. The new tech Istan had no place among the tight-knit regular crew, but neither had she anything in common with the biogeneticists who collaborated on the Soteros Project. And, as an outlaw, she dared confide in no-one. She no longer knew if it was Auron or the _Liberator_ for which she longed the most; only that she wanted to go home.

“Istan!” Another tap on her leg, this time hard enough to hurt. Medda was becoming impatient at her lack of response. “Have you reached the junction?”

Her voice was faint and echoed confusingly in the confined space, and Istan did not even attempt to call a reply. //I can see it,// she sent, glimpsing the double unit mounted almost overhead. Amery seemed to have told the whole crew about her telepathy, and there was no point trying to conceal it, particularly when it could be useful.

So much for her chances of ‘starting a new life’ with no-one aware of her old identity, she thought rather bitterly, reaching up to unseal the junction unit and struggling not to sneeze at the cloud of fresh dust this action released. Telepaths were hardly common enough within the Federation for her to pass unnoticed. Was he hoping to pass her off as dead Antris? Someone, someday, possibly quite soon, was going to report the presence of a lone daughter of Auron, describing her accurately enough to arouse the suspicions of those who hunted Blake and his crew. In truth, thanks to the _Liberator_ ’s exploits, she suspected that little or no description would be necessary — the word ‘Auron’ was almost certainly inextricably linked in the collective mind of Space Command to the word ‘Cally’.

The transmission unit was full of the ambient grime — probably the cause in itself of the fault — and she could make out nothing. The duct was a little wider here, and she pulled herself in yet further until she was finally able to sit up, detach the roll of probes from the back of her belt and bring both hands to bear above her head. The return journey was going to be a nightmare now that she was fully inside the duct. She wondered if there was another access hatch within reach up ahead from which she would be able to emerge head-first.

//Ready for the first test sequence,// she sent to Medda after cleaning out the unit as best she could. At least she could read the indicators now....

* * *

The main lower-deck laboratory space was dark, and the side-labs were only dimly lit. Here and there a lone figure worked diligently in a private pool of light on some self-imposed investigation, but on the whole the lower-deck labs were quiet. For all her painstakingly-renewed equipment, the facilities on board the _Gergovia_ could never compare with those which had been available to the workers of the Soteros Project at the Central Scientific Complex. In any case, the first phase of the Project was complete: the test samples prepared and packed. The second phase would have to await the results of the trials. There was little useful Soteros-related work that could be done, and most of the scientific contingent on board were mere passengers, travelling to observe the results of their twelve-years’ labour, almost in the spirit of a well-earned holiday. Not for the first time, the _Gergovia_ was being used as little more than a cramped, unarmed passenger transport, albeit one providing secure storage for possibly hazardous biological material.

She was more fortunate at that than her remaining five sister-ships, all long since rotting in some cheap-rate scrapyard belt, filled with obsolete technology not even worth the scavenging. The _Gallic_ -class scientific ships had been conceived and designed during an era of renewed expansion when the Federation, led by such men as Lanier and Roturi, had finally broken free from its roots in the old Earth colonies and begun to settle fresh worlds in the new Outer Sectors. By the time the ships were actually, belatedly, built, the political climate had already changed. Lanier was out of favour, though not yet disillusioned enough to have begun scheming for the suicidal coup that was to rock Space Command and ensure his immortalisation not as an inspired commander but as an unstable power-hungry demagogue — history, as they say, having been written by the victors. There were no more long cruises of exploration and research, and the _Gallic_ -class ships’ projected extra-range capacity was cut brutally short in favour of an increased internal volume that left them ungainly and underpowered — and still cramped.

Instead of the four- or five-year self-contained missions of discovery which had originally been envisaged for them, the _Gergovia_ and her sisters from the start were capable of only short-hop scientific shuttle-trips, rarely more than a few days’ travel from permanent stations offering more sophisticated research facilities than any spaceship could ever carry, however ungainly her modified construction. They proved little more than an expensive folly, one ship only being retained and modernized as necessary to act as a temporary mobile laboratory. For the last three decades, the _Gergovia_ had spent most of her time in orbit around a succession of impoverished planets until permanent facilities could be established on the surface, a posting of last resort for commanders unfit for active duty. Under Commander Chu things had changed — a little — but then Chu had Family influence. Once he was gone, the odds were that the ship would be scrapped altogether.

In side-lab bay P3 on the lower deck the lights were on. The background illumination was barely enough to silhouette the dark head of the young man who sat there against the panels behind him, but the carefully-diffused glow from the underside of the low-mounted units spilled brightly downwards onto his white sleeve that rested on the work-surface. Amery sat very still, eyes cast down, as if concentrating on the instruments before him. Above his head one of the power access panels had been hinged down, and two of its transmission indicators pulsed softly with the flow of current, their tiny lights mingling with the faint reflection from below that tinged his naturally pallid face with a hint of green. To his left, close to the arm on which he leaned, were half a dozen of the little clear tubes which held samples of the anti-virus. His right hand rested lightly over the controls of the molecular scanner under which another sample had been placed. Beyond the device, the squat cylindrical shape of a Matrison sequencer was also drawing power from the wall circuits, and a selection of hand-probes, manipulators and other small implements lay within easy reach, some still arranged neatly in their initial positions, while those which had proved useful had been set down rather haphazardly as he finished with them. There was little headroom in the side-lab even for a seated man. The open power panel was brushing against the side of the young scientist’s black hair, but he seemed too intent to notice.

At first glance, he was the very image of a studious worker bent over his equipment. The figure strolling past down the darkened gangway from Bay P5 to the exit had time to glance again, noting the slack hand slipped free from the scanner controls, the stillness of the bent head, the distant gaze of the pale unfocused eyes.... His lip curled.

“Pleasant dreams, Amery?”

He noted with pleasure the scarlet rush of blood to the Auron’s face. The eyes were first startled, then wary as the tormentor was recognised. After a second, the young alien turned his back, very busy of a sudden at the eyepiece of the scanner.

The other watched him for a moment, scowling at the lack of response. “I said, were they pleasant dreams, Amery?”

Amery swung round, flushing again. “No, Toneld, they were not. Please leave me alone!”

“Should be grateful I interrupted you, then.” Toneld flashed him a mocking grin, momentarily satisfied, and considered needling him further as to the subject of his unsatisfactory reverie. But he’d been baiting the haughty Auron for months and it was becoming stale sport. He decided to leave him guessing.

He took a few more paces along the gangway, then turned back with a sudden inspiration just as Amery was returning to his work. “Check I shut down P5 properly, will you? I’m so absent-minded, I never can remember if I left the converter running....” He disappeared into the darkness, grinning.

Amery found his hands clenched tightly together in his lap, and jerked them apart. He was almost certain that Toneld had done no such thing — despite his streak of cruelty, the human was a competent, even conscientious, worker and would never leave a converter to burn itself out. But he felt bound by his sense of duty to check, as his fair-haired young tormentor knew very well.

Wearily, he climbed to his feet and went to inspect the second bay down, where Toneld had been working. As he had expected, all the systems were dark and dead and the converter was cold, obviously unused for hours. He glanced up to the port-side gangway, but the other man had not even bothered to watch the wasted errand he’d contrived. It should have been a relief, but somehow the humiliation seemed even greater.

He sat down again, staring at his own analysis spread out in front of him. Toneld was the worst and the most blatant, but there were others, some of them distinguished men of science with ten or twenty years’ less excuse than Toneld, who lost no opportunity to set him down or mock him when he made a mistake, hiding stinging words under the guise of humour so that he could never protest at the unfairness of it without appearing even more of an ungracious fool. It was some kind of pack instinct among humans, to turn on the odd one out, the one whose very isolation made him vulnerable. He had never sought friendship with any of them; but he had never set out to hurt or offend any of them either.

Cally had known friendship from humans. He had seen true mourning in her mind, when she had shared with him the memory of her dead. He burned with shame, now, remembering how the precious, unvalued intimacy of that moment had been shattered by his own gauche distaste.

//I’m sorry, I’m sorry....// Already that thought had become almost a reflex accompaniment to his memories of her, that presented themselves now in retrospect as one long series of hurtful blunders and shameful lapses on his part. How must he have seemed, to her? How had she ever tolerated him for as long as she had?

The memory of her blind shock and rejection was still seared into his mind. Just what had she seen in him — a clumsy, dependent child? A cocksure young fool? She could hardly have made it more clear if she had tried that his tentative love for her was not only unwanted but totally unthinkable.

Love? He stared unseeing at the miscellany of small tools on the work-surface. Love was supposed to be happiness — two minds blending into one; Antris and Danil exchanging a smile across the width of the lab, so attuned that you could ask his brother a question and not realise until later that it was she who had answered; young couples in the street, too caught up in each other fully to shield their spilling emotions. Could this be love, then? — this one-sided bitter craving, this constant helpless awareness of her?

He had not seen her since the take-off from Blackport. He had avoided, scrupulously, almost religiously, certain areas of the ship at the times when they might have met — had discovered all that he could about the duties and routines she had been assigned, partly for that reason, partly because he craved every crumb of knowledge he could gain about her, even when it hurt. Once, he had gone up to the sickbay again, seeking for some trace of her; but its clean sterility bore no sign or scent of her. He told himself that he was doing the right thing, that he was doing it for her sake — she had no wish to see him, and his absence was the only gift he had left that she might welcome. And he tormented himself with the supposed truth; that he was afraid to face her.

He had never meant it to be like this. He had never dreamed that it would be against her will. They belonged together — not as lovers, he would not have ventured to dare that far, but in their mutual need for comfort in the emptiness. Together, they could have had a little corner of Auron in exile. He had seen a way, as he thought, to set her free from the trap that her hunted life had become. Now instead he found that he had imprisoned her — and imprisoned himself with her. The confines of one ship were not enough to hold two telepaths. Every time he let his shields slip, he was miserably conscious of her presence.

In a way, it made little difference. No matter how tightly he shielded, he couldn’t stop himself thinking about her. A sort of feverish restlessness had hold of him, and he could settle to nothing. The work that fascinated him, that had kept him sane in his isolation, had become almost meaningless. In desperation, he had finally set himself the task of analysing Soteros samples from the stolen case, now safely returned at bitter personal cost to cold storage, in order to ensure that the living viral vector had not deteriorated or become contaminated in any way during the hours when it had been in other hands. The checks to be made were simple and repetitive, almost mechanical, and he should have been able to carry them out in his sleep; but hours had slipped past, and still he had made virtually no progress. At every moment something would remind him painfully of her, distracting him back into his memories. A dozen times already he had been inclined to give up altogether, and if the results so far had been entirely normal he might have done so. But they were not. In any case, over the last two days experience had taught him that any sort of compulsory activity, however nominal or menial, was preferable to the dreary aimless wandering that ensued when he was left to his own devices.

Yet again he forced himself to drag his attention back to the anomalous results. As far as he could tell, they were medically insignificant. The Soteros virus responded, as this variant had been engineered to do, to the genetic signature of the _lerva_ -plague and to no other, and the variation in the time taken to invade infected cells was well within statistical norms. Even the abnormal self-terminating trait introduced for the sake of caution appeared to be functioning correctly. As a treatment for _lerva_ -plague, these samples were as effective as those on which he had run endless tests back in the Central Science Complex.

It was the incidental results — the viscosity, the prismatic coloration, the heat response — that troubled him. They suggested a possibility of adulteration or degradation of the carrier fluid vector, perhaps with unpredictable side-effects. The changes were almost artificially consistent across all the samples he had tested, which raised the further possibility of instrument error or differing calibration between the _Gergovia_ ’s systems and those of the C.S.C. — yet another series of checks that could be invoked to delay the evil moment when he would have to face his conscience and decide whether to report his findings.

He could see no way in which he could make such a report without a full confession of what had happened in Blackport. The result of that might possibly be his own professional ruin — at the moment he was no longer sure he cared — but it would inevitably lead to the exposure of ‘Istan’. As soon as she was identified, his protection would be worse than useless to her. He was aiding a known enemy of the Federation; he would be seen, in effect, as a traitor himself, and all his patron’s influence would be powerless to aid either him or Cally.

He couldn’t do it. The knowledge was stark and uncompromising within him. By trapping her here on the _Gergovia_ , he had betrayed her once already. He could not betray her again, even at the expense of his own conscience.

His findings were medically insignificant, he reminded himself firmly. The minor changes he had observed had no effect whatsoever on the efficacy of the Soteros treatment — he had checked that, and double-checked. Even if the composition of these samples _had_ been slightly altered in some way by their unorthodox journey, whether by temperature fluctuations, atmospheric radiation exposure, sustained vibration, or any one of a host of other possible variables — and he had yet to demonstrate that conclusively — there was no need for it to trouble his conscience. It did not matter that he would never be able to tell anyone, because it it would never be important for anyone else to need to know.

//If I really believe that — // Amery wondered wearily — //if I am really sure both that there is no way for me to mention these findings to any of my colleagues and that there is in any case no danger — then just how much point is there in my taking this investigation any further?//

Trained scientific instincts, shocked at the very idea of such a question, instantly presented him with half a dozen fine abstract reasons for completing his work, but he dismissed them one by one with barely a glance at each. No point, he told himself, feeling a certain dull relief; no point at all. That decision made, he thrust the bulky molecular scanner to one side with a brief savage access of strength, propped both elbows on the work-surface and stared blankly in front of him for a second before letting his head sink down onto his arms, so that his face was hidden.

Instinctively he reached out on the telepathic plane, seeking her, then caught himself back. The one person whose comfort and advice he craved was the last person now who would be likely to grant him either; and the one above all of whom he had no right to make any more demands. The thought brought a further wave of misery.

//How long is this going to last? How long will I have to go on like this — six days? twenty? half a year before I no longer care?// That prospect, for the moment, seemed unutterably bleak. //I’m trying to do the right thing... but I’m so tired... so alone....// He let his thoughts break down into incoherence: tired — alone — alone — alone —

* * *

Cally paused in the shadows of the main lab, grave eyes still watching him. In the other pool of light, over to her left in one of the starboard side-labs further aft, a white figure leaned back, flexing aching shoulders, rubbed briefly at the back of her neck, and bent forward again to the steady rhythm of her work; but Amery never moved. She might almost have believed that he had fallen asleep, if the rigid set of his back had not betrayed him. It occurred to her to wonder if he was not aware of her presence and simply waiting for her to go away....

Perhaps she should go. She had obeyed no rational impulse in coming down here to look for him, and she could find no logic to justify it now that she had found him. She was not sure what she was seeking, nor was she any more certain now how to cope with his feelings for her than she had been during that moment of confusion and pain when the truth had first become clear to both of them. But he was of Auron, and he was the only one on the ship who knew who she truly was, her last tenuous link back to the life she had lost, perhaps for ever — she would not let herself think of that — back to the _Liberator_. He was desperately young, and he had meant her no harm.

She had almost decided to leave; but somehow instead she found herself sending out a gentle wordless mind-probe towards him. It splintered and fell away down shields as smooth and brittle as black glass. His mind was turned entirely inwards upon itself.

Without thinking, she came softly forwards into the little bay that formed the side-lab, reaching out a hand to touch the nearest tensed shoulder, only to recoil as he rose swiftly at the sound of footsteps to face the intruder, one arm half-raised defensively. In the next moment she saw the wary eyes suddenly widen, blind with shock as he recognised her. They stared at each other, Cally taken aback by his reaction, unsure how to respond, unable to read the turmoil of emotions in him, while Amery seemed frozen in place.

What might have been intended as a move towards her was halted almost before it had begun. //I made a promise... I have been trying... to keep myself from trespassing any further in your life — // he managed at last, the tentative sending tightly controlled onto a level that was almost purely verbal.

//I’m sorry — // She flushed. She had not even considered that he might be trying to avoid her. //I’ll go.//

But his sudden desperate protest halted her before she had taken more than one step back into the darkness. His eyes clung to hers, wide with misery. It was hard not to look away — hard to remember that it was this piteous boy who had effectively abducted her from the _Liberator_.

//I do not truly belong anywhere on this ship,// she told him steadily. //You are the closest I have to a friend on board.//

Another stifled movement from Amery. His hands were twisted together unnoticed, the fingers white with tension. //I love you.// He offered the knowledge without hope, making of it a shameful confession of guilt, and she flinched from it. The first time of offering, for him, she guessed; it should not be like this.

//I know.// She made the thought gentle. //I wish I could say the same.// The truth was all that she could give him, watching him gravely, her own loneliness bitter at the back of her throat. His fault; and yet none of his intention. The worst irony of all was that they did need each other, on a level too basic for love or any other emotion to have any part in it. No-one existed in isolation — the Auronar least of all.

Three swift strides took her forward into the dim glow of the side-lab. She caught hold of his locked hands and separated them firmly, clasping his fore-arms with her own, compelling his attention even as she reached out for his mind through shattered shields. She was stronger than he, and her mind surrounded his, enforcing calm, constraining wild-spilling emotions back within the bounds of hard-won discipline, goading him with a deliberated flicker of anger — must I always be your nursemaid? — until he had found from somewhere at least the illusion of a shell of conscious control with which to face her. Only then did she release him.

//You brought me here.// Her concentration was fierce enough to sting. //You isolated me here on this ship amongst my enemies — //

//They are not your enemies!// Finally, a trace of the Amery she had known. //This is a scientific ship, not a warship, and the crew can have no quarrel with you now that you are free of Blake — //

Free of Blake, oh yes, free of all my friends.... She struck back — //all it would take is one word, one breath of suspicion to Security at the next port of call — // and winced at his reaction. So someone had guessed already?

She could feel his control starting to disintegrate again, could feel him slipping away from her down into that inward-feeding morass of obsession and despair from which she shrank. //No!// Cally sent a whiplash of her own panic across the surface of his mind, trying to claw him back. //I don’t need your shame — I need your help. You took the responsibility for my life into your own hands when you chose to bring me here. We are co-conspirators now whether we like it or not; we cannot escape from each other.//

She looked up at him again, meeting his gaze steadily. //I know little of life under the Terran Federation. If I am to pass as a Federation citizen, I shall need help.//

After a stunned second, his eyes widened in disbelief. //You mean — you are prepared to consider what I was trying to tell you about the Federation? You are willing to give it a chance — to abandon the campaign of destruction?// He flushed dark against the green-tinged light from the units behind him. //And — despite everything — you would put your trust in _me_?//

//I will do whatever I have to do in order to stay hidden — in order to survive.// Cally’s face was set, and there was more than a hint of bitterness in her sending; but she managed a slightly crooked smile. //And I trust you to protect me — even when I do not wish it!//

Amery’s own smile dawned in astonished gratitude. //I will do _nothing_ you do not wish — I swear it — //

//Don’t — // Cally cut him off more sharply than she had intended, feeling a sudden cold touch that might have been memory or premonition. //Don’t bind yourself on a moment’s impulse to words you cannot keep.// Don’t pledge me a loyalty I do not want and cannot return, she willed him wordlessly, watching the eager young face grow suddenly serious.

There was a painful honesty in his eyes. //Believe me at least when I give you my word that I will try.//

He offered her his palm in the old truce-gesture, and after a moment she laid her own fingers across it briefly in acceptance. Whatever the nature of the alliance they had just agreed — and judging by his expression, he was as confused as she — somehow, she did trust him. And she would need new allies.

Blake had not heard her. Since the hour she had first awoken on board the _Gergovia_ , she had been hoping and waiting for the alarm that would signal the arrival of the _Liberator_. Hours had slipped passed, shifts had changed; Cally had slept, and finally slept again as hope ebbed, leaving only stubborn belief. Blake would come. However angry he might have been at what must seem like her deliberate disappearance — if he had heard her, he would come.

But there had been no sign of the _Liberator_. Even when she had finally managed to set up a scan of the communications log behind Medda’s back, she had found no mention of the ship there either; not so much as a general warning of Blake’s presence in the Sector. As far as Federation routine communications were concerned, it seemed that the _Liberator_ had dropped out of sight. And — it had to be faced at last — as far as the _Liberator_ ’s crew were concerned, it must have seemed as though Cally too had vanished.

Blake had not heard her. How could he? He had been asleep, most likely; and even if he had been awake, even if he had been of the Auronar, even if she herself had been rested and fully alert, it would have been hard for her to throw a thought to him across the width of a continent. What chance was there that an alien could have heard her? No, the others would grumble at her absence, but they would not have begun to look for her until they planned to leave the planet. Until she was long gone, and the trail not just cold but blown away. Not even Blake could search the whole galaxy for her. Travis himself could hardly have ‘rescued’ her more effectively from her former companions if he had tried.


	17. Friends in the Federation

Lanuv stretched, running fingers through close-clipped brown hair so that it stood up in spikes, massaged the back of her neck, and yawned hugely. She was still rubbing at aching eyes with the heel of one hand as she ducked through the mess-room door. A whole shift spent peering at antiquated instruments was no joke, not when old Chu himself took it into his head to stand bridge-watch and turn that poker-face stare of his on everything he saw as ‘lazy watchkeeping’.

Lanuv got on Chu’s nerves. She tended to rub up most senior officers the wrong way, but to an old martinet like Chu her cheerfully casual approach to life was almost a personal insult. The Commander had been riding her hard all watch, finding fault with almost everything she did — just how much attention did you need to pay to the hull sensors when you were this far out in deep space, for crying out loud? — until she was all but ready to skip ship and run at the next planetfall.

She hadn’t asked to be transferred to the _Gergovia_ ; it wasn’t her fault if Chu thought she wasn’t good enough for his precious ship — the young pilot officer wrinkled up her snub nose into an expression of intense disgust — precious tin-bucket, more like. Come to that, she hadn’t exactly asked for a career in space-flight, either, but at least her first posting had been to a fast ship, even if it had been no more than an armed commercial carrier. She had barely scraped through on strategy and navigation, but she was a competent enough pilot, and her time on the little _P-23_ had finally given her a taste of some of the glamour and dash she’d been ignorant enough to dream of as a youngster when she’d first been told she was to go to the Space Academy. She’d resented her transfer to the unarmed _Gergovia_ from the start, and the last few weeks spent steering the elderly, misshapen, under-powered craft hadn’t changed her opinion one whit.

Lanuv shrugged. She’d kept a straight face, said “yes sir” and “no sir” and even got it the right way round most times, and stayed alert through the entire watch. That was as far as she intended to go to placate old Chu. If he was annoyed enough to get her transferred to another ship — well, she’d hardly be the one weeping salt tears.

The mess-room was as cramped as the rest of the crew’s quarters, but somebody had made an effort to tidy up. The usual litter of half-empty cups and forgotten possessions had vanished, and every item of furniture that wasn’t actually bolted to the floor had been rearranged neatly to clear as much space as possible. More of the Commander’s interference, no doubt. She scowled. A bit of friendly clutter brought the place to life. No wonder the mess-room was practically empty. Who’d want to sit around in those rigidly positioned chairs, or dare to dump their belongings on the edge of the dauntingly clean table?

She headed across the cabin towards the food dispenser, stripping off her uniform jacket along the way and tossing it, without looking, in the direction of the table. The dispenser display was on the blink again. She made a vile face at it and dialled a drink at random, hoping for something harmlessly cold and sweet. What she got was vitazade. Oh well, that would do.

Lanuv yawned again and dropped down into a sprawl in the sagging orange embrace of the nearest chair, balancing her drink on the edge of another and hooking a third up close enough to swing her booted feet onto it. Rolling up her sleeve, she pried the jelly-like Novozim patch free from the soft skin inside her elbow with a thumbnail, rubbing at the faint sticky trace it left behind. The patch was practically exhausted, its rich blue colour faded almost to a clear gel; she’d timed that pretty well. She rolled it into a ball and flicked it with ease born of long practice into the recycler chute set into the bulkhead to her left before drinking down the vitazade and trying once more to rub the grit out of her eyes.

Despite her comfortable slouch and outstretched legs, she couldn’t seem to wind down. The Novozim buzz was still working away somewhere between her eyes, every detail crystal clear in her mind and nagging for attention. That was the worst thing about that stuff — it kept you alert and up to the mark even when you were bored out of your mind, but it took almost as long to wear off as it did to kick in.

There was no way she was going to wait that long before she could manage to relax. Lanuv cast an expert mental eye over the contents of her pill-case — the blue poppers ought to react nicely with the Novozim to fuzz the edge off her mind a bit — dug the flat grey case out of a trouser pocket and thumbed out a couple of pale blue capsules. She triggered off the first one into her left nostril, and let her eyes close in bliss at the blessed release of tension that followed almost instantly. After a second she took a deep breath and cracked open an eye just wide enough to let her flick the empty capsule towards the recycler.

She missed. The capsule hit the other woman square on the cheek, rebounded, and disappeared somewhere down the side of her chair. Typical luck; only one other person in the mess-room, who just happened to be sitting right next to the recycler the one time she missed her aim.

“Sorry about that.” She shot the woman — one of the engineering techs, by the overall — a friendly smile. “I’m still new on this ship. Give me another month and I’ll be able to score into the chute from any chair in the mess-room — sitting, standing or lying.” She sat up straighter just in case. “Do you think you could just toss that capsule over your shoulder when you find it? Thanks.”

The second popper went off into the other nostril, and she felt the last traces of the Novozim’s grip fade. She knew she was grinning like a zany, but she didn’t care. Just for the moment, she was floating high. Poppers did that to you. It didn’t last, worse luck.

The tech was staring at her with one of those oh-so-familiar concerned looks on her face. Lanuv heaved a mental sigh — everybody seemed to set themselves up as amateur medics at this point — and decided to get her piece in first for once. “Look, I really do know what I’m doing, see? I know what you can mix and what you can’t, and what’s addictive and what isn’t. I don’t take anything I can’t afford or anything that mucks with your brain.” She flipped the pill-case open again. “Everything in here’s legal. I don’t mess with Shadow or any of that rot. This is my hobby, and I’m good at it. Could have been a medic, if I’d wanted.”

The other was still looking dubious, and a wicked grin spread across Lanuv’s face. “Here, try one of these. They call them ‘dream hearts’; they let you see the silver lining, appreciate the funny side of life.”

To her surprise, the dubious expression yielded to a grave smile, and the orange pill was lifted from her open palm, inspected delicately between thumb and finger, and then — just as it began to dawn on her that her bluff had been called — returned to her hand. “Thank you, but I think I had better not. My body chemistry is not quite the same as yours, and some human recreational drugs affect us unexpectedly or not at all. Alcohol, for instance.” The tone was perfectly serious, almost formal, but there might have been a hint of amusement lurking behind it.

“What, you can’t drink — not even in port? How do you manage?” Lanuv blurted out; which wasn’t what she’d meant to say at all. Something was nagging at the back of her mind....

A shrug. “Oh, my people have their own vices, believe me.” And, added almost under her breath, “Apathy, for example.”

Lanuv let that go, frowning. “ _Your_ people? You mean — here, you must be Amery’s alien! Istan, isn’t it? Working under Medda in comms? I’m Lanuv — junior pilot officer.”

The alien admitted her identity with a nod. “Our people are the Auronar.” There was a hint of pride in that, despite what she had said before. “Do you know Amery, then?”

Lanuv shrugged in her turn, tucking the dream heart back in her pill-case and slipping the case into its familiar position in her pocket. “Amery’s all right, I suppose. Everyone on the ship knows him. Bit of a loner, isn’t her? Lets people walk all over him. Can’t take a joke — and that pale skin of his shows up a blush like fury, so naturally everyone tends to make fun of him a bit.”

She’d never thought twice about it — someone was always the butt of the jokes on any ship — but somehow in the face of Istan’s steady gaze it no longer seemed so natural. “Here, are you a telepath too?” she demanded somewhat hastily. “Could you telepath something to me, or does it only work with other aliens? I asked Amery once, but he said no. Is it rude to ask about it or something? I’d love to know what telepathy sounds like!”

Istan just looked at her in silence. Lanuv scowled — if the woman was going to refuse, she might at least have the decency to say so straight out — and then suddenly there were calm soundless words inside her head, a thread of thought that was not hers so that she almost gasped at the strangeness of it, staring suspiciously at this dark-haired tech who looked just as human as anyone else: head, hands, feet — and yet _wasn’t_.

//It is not rude to ask,// the thought told her. //But it is harder for us to send a thought to a non-telepath, particularly to a stranger: and perhaps Amery had reason to believe that it was no more than a game to you.// Lanuv flushed; and yet somehow ‘Amery’ was not a name — no more than Istan’s thought in her head was a spoken voice — but a vivid little image of the young scientist so that she felt for a moment as if she almost knew him well.

She shook her head in disbelief, trying vainly to get rid of the queer feeling that had managed to get itself stuck somewhere behind her eyes, like the after-effects of some powerful hallucinatory. “That — that is incredible! That has to be the ultimate mind-altering experience.” Too late, it dawned on her that this might not be terribly flattering; but Istan just looked amused. “You mean, your people talk to each other like that all the time? What’s it like to be a telepath?”

The alien woman — the ‘Auronar’ — made no move from her seat. She remained poised and calm as ever; but the secret smile was gone, and her eyes were bleak and shadowed. //To be a telepath in your world — is to be utterly alone.//

The thought was as expressionless as before, and despite herself Lanuv felt her skin creep. “Not so bad now there’s two of you, then?” she offered in a clumsy attempt at distraction; and at the same moment felt the buried memory pulling more strongly. Two of them, of which one was Amery —

She swung her feet down off the chair and leaned forward, lazy drug-hazed eyes narrowing into a sudden fierce hazel stare. For a brief instant, though she did not know it, she was the living image of her father.

“I knew I’d seen you somewhere before. You were there in the spaceport — with Amery — that night we refuelled at Blackport. I took you for a cheap touch, a dockside armful — but you’re not, are you?”

The alien was on her feet, her sharp-boned face stretched into a tight smile that had nothing to do with humour at all — Lanuv flung up both arms in an instinctive clumsy attempt to fend her off, but Istan had halted, her eyes darting around the cabin from deck to bulkheads to the deck above. She looked trapped.

Lanuv let out a rather shaky breath as the danger died out of the other’s face, to be replaced by a sort of defeated resignation. They’d done basic combat at the Academy, but it was one more of the many classes she’d never been particularly good at. What on earth was biting Istan?

“I should never have allowed myself to be brought here.” The slow bitterness in the alien’s words, and the way she looked at the _Gergovia_ as if it were a cage rang a bell somewhere at the back of Lanuv’s mind. She took a wild guess.

“You left your own ship behind in Blackport, right?” The shock of surprise on the face opposite was sufficient answer.

“You know, I did something like that once,” she continued casually, trying not to let on she was terrified the crazy woman would try to go for her again. “Jumped ship and went off with the boy I’d been seeing on leave. He was a steward on one of those crack passenger liners — the _Stellar Queen_ — and he smuggled me on board just before she was due to take off. I thought I’d get to see the galaxy in style.”

She made a disgusted face, remembering. “The whole thing was a mistake from the start. I had to spend almost all my time locked into his minute cabin in the crew quarters, I never got to see a thing and I was bored out of my mind. After we’d been shut up together for a week we couldn’t stand the sight of each other — I skipped out on the first planet I got the chance, picked up a short-stop flight to the next system on my old ship’s route, and made sure I was there at the foot of the exit ramp when they opened up to let the Customs on board.”

She grinned. “I got two weeks in the brig — but it was almost worth it, just to see their faces when that hatch opened up. I tell you, doing solitary in the _P-23_ ’s brig was absolute heaven after what I’d just been through. I promised myself there and then that was the last time I’d ever let some boy sweet-talk me into anything.“

Istan was still on her feet in the middle of the mess-room, but she saw with relief that the taut expression had relaxed into a hint of genuine amusement. The dangerous look was gone as if it had never been.

Lanuv herself stood up — they were much of a height — and examined the Auronar with deceptively lazy eyes, her head tilted slightly to one side. “Right now, I’d guess that you’d give anything to be back on your own ship again.” Istan made no move; but once more, the look on her face was answer enough.

“Cheer up —” she put a cautious arm around the other woman’s shoulders, found them tense, but human-seeming enough beneath the uniform — “I’m sure they’ll have you back — even if they do clap you in the brig!”

Istan was shaking her head, short-cropped curls shadowing her eyes. “It is not that simple, Lanuv. Our ship has no fixed route — we had not yet discussed our next... destination — and if they are looking for me, they could be anywhere. Even if the ship is still at Blackport, I dare not send a message....”

Lanuv’s eyebrows shot upwards. So it was that kind of ship, was it? Not surprising, really, not with Blackport’s reputation — but she’d never have thought Amery had it in him. Quiet, stick-to-the-rules Amery — well, well, well.

She let her arm slip from Istan’s shoulders, tilted her head over to the other side. “You know,” she said casually, “the _P-23_ was a commercial carrier — but not all the commerce we did was strictly legal. We called at Insecution once. I might know a shady contact or two there who could get a discreet message back to Blackport for you. Strictly on the side, of course.”

The Auronar’s eyes widened, her head coming up incredulously; then without warning she turned to Lanuv and put both arms around her, her face hidden in the young woman’s shoulder, shuddering with the release of tension. For a moment Lanuv was taken completely aback — she couldn’t remember anyone ever holding her like that, not since they’d taken her mother away — then she found herself feeling strangely protective. She extracted her arms from Istan’s grasp and hugged the alien closer against her own sturdy warmth, half-expecting tears; but none came.

After a while Istan raised dry eyes to look at her. Lanuv returned the gaze with some curiosity, but smiled. A little uncertainly, Istan smiled back. “I never expected to find friends... in the Federation.”

Lanuv shrugged it off. “Friends with everyone, that’s my motto. You never know when you may need to be able to call in a favour.” Her grin broadened. “Now, what I’d really like is a transfer into a pursuit ship. I don’t suppose you could swing that for me?”

The other woman’s smile had frozen, and she looked stricken. The young pilot officer cast her eyes upwards — not another telepath without a sense of humour. “Look, it was a joke, all right?”

“I know,” Istan said softly, but she still didn’t look happy.

Lanuv gave a soft snort of disgust and curled herself back down into her chair, automatically falling into her usual comfortable slouch. She propped her feet up and watched Istan absent-mindedly clearing away her vitazade glass and the empty blue capsule she’d put down beside it. A suspicion came to her.

“Istan, was it you who shifted all the furniture around?”

The tech paused and turned, one hand still outstretched to the recycler chute. “Was that wrong? I hoped the crew would be pleased —”

“Oh, the Commander’ll love it,” Lanuv predicted gloomily. “Probably expect us to keep it that clean for the rest of the voyage....” She made a face. “It doesn’t matter. Just don’t do it again, all right?”

“All right,” Istan echoed, smiling back. She bent to the food dispenser. “Lanuv, would you like anything to eat?”

“No thanks, I’ll be going to try and grab some sleep in a minute.” She watched the woman make her selection, curious as to what aliens ate; much the same as humans, by the look of it, not that you could really tell from appearances. Food on board ship only seemed to come in three varieties — hard, soft and lumpy.

It was a strange feeling, to have someone else relying on her. She wondered just what Istan and her crew were on the run from. Of course, if she ever got her pursuit ship she’d be spending her time chasing down people like Istan — and keeping commercial ships on the straight and narrow. Made you think, didn’t it?

She made a soft sound of amusement, watching Istan’s back with something akin to affection. Oh well, that was the luck of the draw. She’d never be a good enough pilot to make it to a pursuit ship anyway.

Second-rate all my life, that’s me. No hard feelings, eh? Lanuv gave herself a lazy grin. No hard feelings.


	18. Turning Point

“Where is it?” Blake stared at the faint starfield visible on the main screen, then around the flight deck as if he expected to find the missing ship there. His gathering frown finally came to rest on Jenna. “I thought you said we’d finally traced the _Gergovia_?”

“She’s out there.” Jenna stared back down at him coolly from her flight position. “Zen, give us a visual fix.”

“EXTRA-RANGE DETECTOR PROGRAM OVERRIDE CONFIRMED. RELATIVE COURSE BEARING OF VESSEL UNDER SURVEILLANCE REMAINS AT NEGATIVE _Z_ POINT ZERO FIVE, NEGATIVE _X_ POINT ZERO SEVEN.”

As they watched, the display blanked then reconfigured, with the grid overlay indicating extreme range. The flashing mark representing the other ship was almost dead centre.

“There she is.” Despite herself, Jenna felt an irrational touch of relief. The image on the screen was only a visual analogue of data already received by the _Liberator_ ’s sensors — it would be ridiculous seriously to believe that the evidence of her own eyes was somehow more reliable than Zen’s constant surveillance — but she couldn’t help feeling reassured by the simple continued presence of that green triangle.

She slipped down from her seat and went forward to join Blake, who turned to her impatiently, arms folded. “What extra-range detector program?” he demanded. “Why are we so far out? Jenna, what’s going on?”

“I’m keeping station on the _Gergovia_ at extreme sensor range.” She met his gaze, eyebrows slightly raised. “As ordered.”

But there was no sign of the reluctant grin she could once have drawn from him, and her own face hardened. “I assume you do still want to keep them from knowing that we’re here?”

“I should have thought we could have got a couple of spacials closer without worrying about that! At this range we might as well claim to be trailing the nearest stellar system with about the same degree of accuracy — if we lost that ship in the next five minutes it could be halfway to any of the neighbouring Sectors before we reached its last known position. And didn’t you tell me there was a significant power drain from use of the extra-range detector? How long are you planning to keep this up?”

“Blake, I do know what I’m doing.” She glanced across the flight deck. “All right, Zen, return to the previous detector program and maintain relative course. I want to be informed the moment that ship alters speed or direction, if we lose contact, or if the sensors detect any form of scanning beam.” Blake was trying to interrupt, but she ignored him. “Do we have any visual material on _Gallic_ -class cruisers in the data banks?”

“ORIGINAL CONSTRUCTION MODELS AND SPECIFICATIONS ARE AVAILABLE. HOWEVER, SURVIVING MEMBERS OF THIS CLASS UNDERWENT CONSIDERABLE MODIFICATION —”

“Never mind that. Just show us a rough picture.”

There was a perceptible pause before the inevitable “CONFIRMED.” and Jenna shot another brief suspicious glance at Zen. Technological sophistication was all very well, but they had quite enough conflicts of personality here on the flight deck as it was without the computers joining in.

“All the elegance of a flying brick.” Blake had dropped onto the seating at the front of the flight deck and was staring up at the rotating image on the main screen through narrowed eyes. Looking at the stumpy lines of the ship depicted there, where it was all too apparent to the professional eye how hull integrity and atmospheric manœuvrability had been sacrificed, supply lines unnecessarily extended and exposed, and normal communication links between the various modules obstructed or severed, all in the name of increased internal capacity, Jenna couldn’t help but feel that Blake’s comment made up in accuracy for what it lacked in originality.

“All the speed and agility of a flying brick, as well,” she retorted. “That’s why I’m not worried about losing trace of her. The _Gergovia_ doesn’t have either the engine capacity or the fuel reserves for rapid course changes, and as far as I know she’s totally unarmed as well. She was never designed to take line of battle. She was designed to observe and analyse natural phenomena, and to do so at the expense of almost all her other shipboard systems.”

She watched the tumbling model a moment longer. “Zen, freeze rotation. I want a three-quarters top view. Now highlight the sensor arrays.”

She sat down beside Blake, smoothing down the lower edge of her tunic, leaning forward with elbows propped on her knees. “See that? Her long-distance sensor arrays are almost the match of ours. She may not have the ship-seeker beams that could pinpoint us, but she can gauge the strength of a magnetic storm or measure an ion reef at a separation of over three million spacials. All it would take is for one alert observer to pick up traces of our drive trail out here away from the normal space lanes before they realise there’s a ship shadowing them, and a large one into the bargain. If you’re not prepared to risk that, our only option is to stand off at extreme long range and to use the extra-range detector in microsecond bursts to maintain our relative position. Using the current program of one burst every thirty seconds, Zen calculates that we can continue surveillance at this range for up to five days and still have enough power in reserve to carry out the double trip from here to Insecution and back at a speed of Standard by 6 without recharge. By that time even you should have been able to work out just what you plan to do.”

“I need to know the situation on board before I can make any plans, Jenna! We’re hardly going to find out much at this range.”

Jenna shrugged and made as if to rise. “All right — it’s your decision. I’ll take us in closer.”

“Wait!” Blake snapped, and glared at Jenna as she suppressed a smile. “If we’re really following that ship, then she’s hardly on course for Insecution. As you said, out here we’re away from all normal space lanes — not only is this not the route from Blackport to Insecution, it’s not the route to anywhere. The next habitable system on this vector is Kirol, in the Third Sector; and that would be another six days’ journey at this speed. What are they doing on this heading in the first place? Wait a minute —” the realisation was dawning almost visibly — “how do we know we really have got the right ship this time?”

Since the same idea had occurred to her some time previously, Jenna was able to dismiss this spectre with a weary look. “Do you think I haven’t checked? After spending nearly twenty hours shadowing the wrong ship because she happened to be the only one to have left Blackport at the right time and in the right direction?” After that little fiasco, it was no wonder it had taken her two days to relocate the _Gergovia_. The intuitive deduction that had enabled her to pull it off had been a brilliant piece of piloting, the scale of which Blake obviously took completely for granted.

“Orac has been through their entire computer system,” she told him. “This time it’s the _Gergovia_ all right. ID beacon, ship’s log — everything tallies.” She glanced again at the man beside her, gauging his mood. “And, incidentally, Blake, Orac says there’s no trace of Cally in those computers.”

He stiffened. “What do you mean, ‘no trace of Cally’?”

“Just that.” Jenna’s own expression was not unsympathetic. If this turned out to be a false trail, then Cally could be anywhere — could already be dead. Then the decision to give up looking would be up to Blake — and she was glad it was not hers. Already she found that she missed the quiet fire and calm insight of the other woman’s presence more than she would have guessed.

“Not only is there no mention of the name Cally anywhere, but there’s no indication she was ever on board. The ship took on no passengers, male or female, from Blackport — there are no records of any prisoners being held, or even of any changes to the crew. I’m not saying she couldn’t have got on board somehow; I’m just warning you that Orac can’t find any evidence to prove that she did.”

Blake was staring down at his own interlocked fingers. She sighed, and touched his arm. “Listen —” he looked up — “Orac did discover one very interesting fact. There _is_ an Auron on that ship — has been for weeks. But it’s not Cally. It’s a man. A scientist from the Federation Central Scientific Complex.”

“Vila’s story —”

She nodded. “I know. It all ties in.” A cold thought occurred to her. “I can’t help wondering....”

She stood up abruptly and walked down to the front of the flight deck, then round to the control banks beside Zen. Her back was to Blake as she watched the constantly changing pastel patterns that chased across the soft glow of the panels like the flush and ebb of blood under the skin. One hand traced the controls, seeking the reassurance of the familiar. She did not look round when she spoke. “Blake, just how badly do you think Cally misses Auron?”

“How should I know?” The words were startled out of him with the force of an expletive. “I offered to take her back. She refused. We haven’t talked about it since. Why? What difference does it make?”

Why so defensive, Blake? What’s got into you lately? The rhythm of the flowing colours was almost hypnotic. She let it take her back, back into the past.

“I’ve been trying to imagine myself into Cally’s place. Thinking about those last few days in the transit cell, when it started to dawn on me that I really was going to spend the rest of my life on Cygnus Alpha, that I’d never see Earth or any civilised planet again....” But it wasn’t the same. It was the loss of freedom that had been unbearable, to her; to be trapped on a planet, any planet, and spend the rest of her life as a ground-crawler where the stars could be no more to her than a blurred pattern in the night sky....

Earth itself had been no great loss. She didn’t care if she never saw Earth again, and as things were now she probably never would. It was the heart of the Terran Federation, the birthplace of humanity — but it was also an old, long-since-exploited world where the dead hand of a thousand past generations weighed heavy on the shoulders of the living, New Calendar or no New Calendar. She had come to Earth for the first time as an adult, with open eyes, seeking profit — Earth was the richest of the Near Worlds — not the instinctive sense of belonging that so many from the colony worlds were fools enough to expect. Earth was in her blood, she would never attempt to deny that, but it was not her home. Neither was distant, massive Harmony, where she had been born.

She straightened up and turned, shaking her head. “I can’t do it. I’ve never felt about any place the way I suspect Cally feels about Auron — and then there’s the whole business of her being a telepath with no-one to talk to, and the only one of her kind for Sectors all around —”

“What has all this got to do with an Auron on board the _Gergovia_?” Blake demanded again, though the look on his face suggested that he had followed her line of thought only too clearly. Oh well, if he wanted it spelt out:

“I’ve been wondering if Avon wasn’t right after all.” The worst of it was that it was Avon’s most unpalatable advice that had a habit of being right. “You see, now the Federation does have something to offer which Cally might want. Telepathy. Auron — or a part of Auron, at least.”

Blake was on his feet. “Cally wouldn’t —”

“Yes, I know that.” Jenna sighed and went to him, searching his face closely. “Cally is very loyal. But — has it ever occurred to you that the rest of us all have... have personal reasons of one kind or another to follow you, and Cally doesn’t? She is loyal to an _ideal_ ; and if that ideal were... tarnished, if she could be brought to believe that you no longer shared the same aims.... Blake: is there anything — _anything_ — Cally could have found out in Blackport, anything you’ve hidden from us that could be used to discredit you in her eyes?”

“I —” For a moment Blake wore a strangely helpless look. “I don’t think so. But there are whole chunks of that part of my life I can’t even remember.”

“I thought you broke that conditioning?” Jenna frowned. “You remembered Travis. You even remembered the process of conditioning itself.”

“Just how much of the last five years can you remember, Jenna? In detail?” And, as she thought that over, taken aback: “I’ve tried to piece things together. Some of it is clear. Some parts of what I remember feel like a dream that happened to someone else. There are other things that seem to take place in the wrong order, as if someone had sliced my memories into blocks and then reshuffled them. And large parts of it all are just — missing. The unimportant things, the ones you take for granted, the ones you tend to forget in any case.

“I remember a couple of furious quarrels with my sister in that last year before she... before the mindwipe. I don’t remember if we ever ate together, walked together, laughed together over family jokes.... I remember Travis and that final meeting of the Freedom Party as clearly as I remember our first day on the _London_. I remember a few big raids on interrogation facilities. What I’ve lost is the everyday detail of the Freedom Party — the organisation, the ordinary meetings, the routine sabotage.... For all I know or can tell to the contrary, we spent our time holding wealthy officials for ransom and dosing the supplements for pregnant women with hallucinogenics as a ploy to stir up unrest against the Administration!”

He laughed, shortly. “It’s possible I could have any number of sordid secrets in my past — but the Federation would surely have used them before now. Instead they’ve already set out twice to discredit me through lies, once out of my own mouth, once out of the mouths of children, and Cally knows that. Why should she believe in any new story?”

“If it didn’t come from the Federation.” Jenna voiced her own fears. “If it were true, Blake.” There was a moment’s silence. She held his gaze with hers; but she could see no betraying flicker at the back of his eyes, only blank uncertainty before he shook his head.

“There’s nothing — nothing that I know about, at least. I’d give you my word —”

“It’s all right. I believe you.” She thrust back her hair with one hand, turning away. “It was a guess, that’s all. We’ve been guessing all along. We don’t know what happened to Cally — we don’t know why — we don’t even know for certain that she’s on board that ship —”

“INFORMATION.” Jenna swung round sharply, and the low table caught her behind the knee as she moved so that she had to grasp at Blake to save her balance. He too was staring at Zen, frowning.

“SENSORS REPORT RETRODRIVE ACTIVATION FLUX. EXTRA-RANGE DETECTOR READINGS CONFIRM DECELERATION OF _GALLIC_ -CLASS CRUISER AND INDICATE CONTINUING COURSE CHANGE OF DELTA BLUE ONE.”

“Zen, I want the extra-range detector back on full-time.” Blake’s jaw was set. “Reduce speed immediately — don’t lose contact with the other ship and don’t get too close. We need to stay out of their sensor range until we know what’s going on.”

“THE DETECTOR SCANNING RATE HAS ALREADY BEEN INCREASED AS REQUIRED TO MAINTAIN THE RELATIVE COURSE AND SEPARATION PREVIOUSLY REQUESTED,” Zen returned with infinite computer patience. “ASSUMING STANDARD DECELERATION CURVE AND COURSE VECTOR ADJUSTMENT, STRATEGY UNITS CURRENTLY COMPUTE THAT THE VESSEL UNDER SURVEILLANCE WILL COME TO REST AT ASTRO POINT 293 IN THE FOURTH SECTOR AFTER AN ELAPSED TIME OF APPROXIMATELY FOURTEEN MINUTES. FLIGHT PREDICTIONS WILL BE UPDATED AS FURTHER DATA BECOMES AVAILABLE.”

Jenna’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Nice to have a flight computer with a bit of initiative for a change,” she observed under her breath in Blake’s direction, and after a moment surprised the ghost of a smile out of him.

From the corner of her eye she caught movement, and glanced round. “Gan?” It was almost time for the end of her watch on the flight deck, she realised with something of a shock. Gan would be expecting to take over the monotonous routine of the search for the _Gergovia_....

But he had obviously heard enough to work out what was going on. His broad face was alight with enthusiasm. “Blake, I’ll go and wake the others. We’ll meet you at the teleport —”

“No.” Blake’s voice was flat, and Gan halted, half-turning, at the top of the steps, framed against the glow from the passage beyond.

“We won’t keep you waiting.” The first trace of doubt was in his eyes. “Fourteen minutes is long enough for even Vila to get ready, and you’ll need all the backup you can get when you go over to the _Gergovia_ to get Cally.”

“None of us is going over to the _Gergovia_. Not yet, anyway. Not until we have a clearer idea what’s going on.” Blake had pushed past Jenna to the front of the flight deck. Now he made his way round towards Gan, looking up at the other man. “The star charts show nothing out here — not so much as a navigational beacon. Why are they here when they ought to be halfway to Insecution by now?”

There was one obvious answer to that, and Jenna supplied it. “A rendezvous with another ship. Picking something up. Transferring something —”

“Or someone!” Gan came back down the steps in a rush to confront Blake. “If there’s a chance that there’s another ship out there coming for Cally, we’ve got to do something to get her back before they make contact. We’ve only just got here in time —”

“REVISED FLIGHT PREDICTION NOW AVAILABLE,” Zen said calmly. Blake glanced round from Gan to Jenna, then up at the computer. “How long have we got, Zen?”

A fractional pause. “CLARIFY.”

“How many minutes left until the _Gergovia_ becomes stationary?” Blake repeated, almost succeeding in keeping the edge out of his voice.

“IRRELEVANT,” Zen responded, and, as jaws dropped: “RETRODRIVE CUT. OBSERVED COURSE VECTOR NOW DELTA BLUE FIFTEEN.”

“Blue _fifteen_?” Jenna was already on the move, but at that piece of news she missed her footing and almost stumbled. Delta blue fifteen implied thrust at an angle of more than ninety degrees to the ship’s heading. The ship would end up pivoting about her own axis — starting to coast stern-first....

She reached her flight console, catching at the seat back to steady herself. Blake was half a pace behind her. She ignored him. “Zen, I want a time-coded copy of all the sensor data on that ship since we first detected her.”

At the back of her mind it was all beginning to make a queer kind of sense — she’d done this herself, in the days when she too had flown an under-powered, overloaded ship. With her left hand, she was already clicking through her navigational programs; with her right hand she linked in Zen’s channelled data, tapped out a command sequence, watched the visual analysis unfold: stresses, thrust vectors — then, suddenly, the ship bleeding off speed, turning, slowing deceleration, still turning, bringing her main drives round to bear....

Jenna straightened up from the controls sharply, almost colliding with Blake. She read the question in his eyes before he spoke, and shook her head. “Zen’s right. The _Gergovia_ ’s not stopping at all. She’s coming round onto a new course.”

“CONFIRMED. REVISED FLIGHT PREDICTION SUGGESTS FINAL COURSE BEARING WILL BE 50316 FOR THE ARNYA SYSTEM. STRATEGY UNITS ADVISE IMMEDIATE EVASIVE ACTION TO REMAIN OUTSIDE SENSOR RANGE.”

“Compute evasive sequence and execute!” Blake snapped. “Have they seen us?”

“I doubt it.” Jenna was working on the new navigational data one-handed, leaning on the console with the other. “They wouldn’t be on that course if they had. They’re closing on us, but only slowly — and we were well outside their sensor range when the course change began.”

She made a sudden connection. “Wait a minute — the _Arnya_ system?”

Their eyes met, frowning, and after a moment Blake shrugged. “It’s what we expected — assumed — from the start, after all... but then why come all the way out here? Why head off for Kirol when people could be dying?”

“Knowing the Federation,” Jenna said bitterly, “that might be the idea.”

Arnya itself was a small K-type star with five planets, of which only the fourth was — marginally — habitable. The original colonists had named their home Khvorolsk; but the old name had barely outlasted the first generation. For almost ninety years now Arnya IV had been known to the Federation by the name bestowed upon it by its more fertile neighbours elsewhere in the constellation — Insecution.

* * *

Gan came down the passage after her as she left the flight deck, catching at her sleeve and trying to attract her attention in urgent half-whispers until she finally gave in as they reached the first intersection, turning to face him impatiently. “Gan, I’m tired. I’ve been standing double watches for two days now while we’ve been trying to trace the _Gergovia_. Can’t it wait?”

“But now that we’ve found the ship —” Gan made a helpless gesture with both hands, let them drop in defeat. “You’ve got to help me persuade Blake to do something to get Cally back!”

“I’ve been trying to push him into making a decision for days. I tried again earlier on tonight, when we first detected the ship. We both tried just now. I’ve had enough. You’ve got the whole of the rest of your watch to persuade him in — I don’t suppose he’ll leave the flight deck now before morning. I just want to get some sleep.”

“He doesn’t listen to me,” Gan said simply, without rancour.

Jenna sighed. “He doesn’t seem to be listening to any of us much any more. I was against this whole Insecution business from the beginning, you know that. Now that Cally’s mixed up in it — and the ship supposedly carrying the vaccine just happens to decide to take the scenic route instead of speeding off on her mission of mercy —” She broke off, watching Gan’s face brighten with the onset of an idea.

“Jenna — what if the _Gergovia_ came out here to pick up instructions? Not a message buoy, we’d have heard that broadcasting, but a physical message in some kind of capsule? That would explain why we couldn’t find any trace of another ship, nor any sign of dumped cargo or...”

“Dumped prisoners,” Jenna supplied grimly as he hesitated. There was a moment’s silence until she forced a smile.

“Nice idea, Gan, but the _Gergovia_ couldn’t have retrieved any kind of capsule while she was still under Time Distort drive. She would have had to drop out below Time-Distort One. In any case, message buoys are a smugglers’ trick, primitive technology. The Federation control all communications; if they wanted to issue secret codes they’d use a focused sub-space transmission and double-encipher it with a high level security key, or simply place a delayed-release command sequence in the ship’s computer.” The Federation didn’t bother with elaborate secrecy. They didn’t need to.

The threat of a tension headache was beginning to tighten around her scalp. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and sighed. “It’s just one more potentially sinister mystery to add to our catalogue of blunders so far. Perhaps the _Gergovia_ ’s captain is getting danger money and wants to spin out the voyage as long as possible. Perhaps he was ordered to fake an approach course from the Third Sector. Who knows? It makes no difference. Unless something else turns up to force Blake to act, it sounds as if we’re going to be trailing along behind the scientific ship all the way to Insecution while he tries to make up his mind.”

She would not admit in front of Gan just how badly Blake’s frightening indecision had shaken her. It was Blake’s impetuous instincts that had guided them all from the beginning, welded them together to serve a driving purpose even when it was not one they would ever have chosen to follow alone. She had known him to be wrong, on occasion; she had seen him obsessed or guilt-ridden. But she had never before known him to shrink from a decision that had to be made.

“He’s got a point, you know.” Gan’s reasonable tone attempted to belie the trouble in his eyes. “This isn’t a freighter, or even a pursuit ship. She’s got a crew of fifteen or more, and she’s carrying nearly twice as many scientists again. It would be chancing it for four of us to teleport over there and try to demand Cally at gunpoint.”

“All it takes is the right threat,” Jenna retorted. “Blake, Avon and I could have taken the _London_ between the three of us once we had control of the computer. Blake pulled Avalon out of the Federation complex on Fimbuldyr single-handed under the nose of the Supreme Commander herself. A gun in the right place and a bit of luck will get you into anything up to Central Control on Earth itself — any Amagon could tell you that.

“The _Gergovia_ is a third our size, has a quarter of our speed and is almost certainly totally unarmed. One shot from the neutron blasters would be enough to disable her — two would probably destroy her. What more threat do you want?”

Gan stared at her. “You can’t do that. This is a civilian ship!”

“So was the _London_ ,” Jenna said coldly. “She’s a Federation ship, Gan, and we could have Cally out of there any time Blake chooses.”

“But then — why?”

She had never thought she would end up wasting sympathy on Gan; but the painful incomprehension in his eyes wrung a kind of unwilling pity from her. “Because it’s not that simple,” she told him. “Because Cally may not be on board — and even if she is, she may not want to come.”

“I don’t believe that!” Gan said stubbornly.

One shoulder lifted in a half-shrug. “Blake doesn’t want to believe it either.”

They looked at each other for a long moment. “If only there were some way we could talk to Cally,” Gan said at last. It was almost a plea.

Jenna said nothing. She watched Gan turn, heavily, and begin his walk back to the flight deck. If only we could contact Cally... but instead we have to guess. Whether Cally is suffering at the hands of the Interrogation Division for her knowledge of the _Liberator_ , or awaiting execution as a political pawn to be used against Auron, or cramped in some cell, clinging to her shrinking hopes of rescue; whether she has sold herself as living bait to the Federation, trading our liberty as the price of her own survival, or been betrayed by telepathy into unconscious co-operation, or chosen freely to ally herself with this scientist of her own kind; whether she has found peace at last in death or in a new life on some planet free of the Federation — sooner or later, Blake, we will have to find out. And if she has betrayed us, willingly or not, delaying the knowledge will do nothing to soften the bitter truth when it comes....


	19. Communications Failure

//The results are the same!//

Amery’s sudden jubilant sending took Istan by surprise. There was a fierce smell of singeing as her attention slipped; the bridging probe in her hand had made momentary contact with the exposed circuits beside the broken link she was working on, and the main screen died in a brief static splutter.

“Congratulations, tech,” came the dry comment from the pilot’s seat. “Now we’re running blind. Medda, I thought you said you could fix this without taking the viewscreens off-line?”

The senior tech glanced round from her own work at the far side of the bridge, her eyes travelling from the darkened screen to the ruined circuit, taking in Istan’s face along the way. Her mouth tightened into a hard line. “One moment, please, Mr Bultis, while I switch in the backups.”

She thrust the heavy bundle of cabling in her arms back up into its housing without apparent effort and rose to her feet, a compact, strongly-built woman in her fifties, to lumber across behind the pilot and unclip the panel beside Istan. Stubby fingers swiftly reseated the main data lines into a row of secondary sockets, and a sweep of her hand down across the transfer switches brought the display back to life.

“Better take it easy,” she warned Bultis. “I still haven’t traced those power surges, and the backup circuits haven’t been serviced in a while.”

“Will do,” came the laconic reply. Only then did Medda turn her attention to her assistant. They looked at each other in silence.

“I am sorry,” Cally told her simply. “I was careless.” It had been she who had persuaded Medda that she was competent to carry out the repair while the systems were still running, and the other woman had taken her at her word.

Medda held the stare an instant longer, her eyes cold, then glanced down at the damage. “There’s no point wasting any more time on that. The whole board will have to come out now. Get me the spare from down in Stores; I’ll make the modifications myself this time.”

Cally said nothing, accepting the implied rebuke, and Medda frowned. “I don’t understand what you’re playing at, Istan, but I’m not having it. It’s not that you can’t do good work, either, you’ve proved that. But there’ll be no place for you on this ship if you can’t keep your mind on the job at hand.”

For a moment she looked more puzzled than angry, a senior officer concerned by a subordinate who let obvious talent go to waste. Then a muffled curse from Bultis brought her attention snapping back to practicalities as the remaining bridge screens blurred again under the impact of another power surge. Her heavy features hardened. “Move it, girl! Those backup links aren’t worth the quartz they’re stored on, and we’ll lose more than just comms if the main power goes!”

Obediently, Cally moved, slipping out through the heavy doors at the back of the bridge and down through the cramped passages to Stores on the lower mid-deck, three doors along from Medda’s official sanctum in the narrow but spotless cabin that served as the comm-shack. Already she knew her way around Stores blindfold; Medda’s insistence and the state of the ship’s systems between them had seen to that.

It was mid-shift, and the crew were all either at their duties or relaxing. The passageways were almost deserted. Twice, when she did encounter other crewmen likewise on errands or on their way back to their own quarters, she brushed past with eyes cast down and a muttered apology for the enforced contact in the narrow space, her hurried steps ringing dully on the herringbone grid of the deck plating. In truth, as far as she had been able to judge, there was no immediate need for any great haste. In the course of the last five days she had found herself assisting at enough comms emergencies to gain a good idea of which ones threatened the ship’s vital systems and which were simply highly inconvenient. But Medda would not be able to continue her diagnostic work until the damaged board had been replaced, and she did not wish to cause any more trouble for Medda; and after all, none of the backup circuits on the _Gergovia_ seemed to be truly reliable any more. Come the next refit, she must make sure some attention was paid to the secondary systems as well as to the primaries....

Not for the first time, Cally pulled her thoughts up sharply. She was allowing herself to plan ahead as if she had truly become Istan, a junior tech with no other concerns than to keep her battered old ship running and someday, perhaps, to succeed to the berth of her senior! She had no loyalty to this ship, she reminded herself sharply. She did not belong here. She was a rebel, a free spirit who opposed everything these people stood for. She must not allow herself to become seduced into the safe normality of service to the great all-consuming machine of the Federation.

Stores was dark and empty, as always. The comm section was on the third aisle, at the end of the row. Cally activated the light and made her way down between the high storage units towards the rear wall, sending back a terse query to Amery as she went: //What is it? Is it important?//

It was more than a day and a half since she had last seen him, and that had only been a brief glimpse in passing; but they had made telepathic contact on several occasions, and he had seemed stable enough, almost over-scrupulous now in his mental control. For him to have interrupted her as abruptly as he had done a few minutes ago, something must have happened.

//The tests — // Amery sent, in a tumble of enthusiasm and relief that was almost tangible in her mind. //The other samples match — //

Belatedly, her irritation seemed to dawn on him. The eager intimacy shrank back into the awkward formal address he might have offered an elder who had caught him eavesdropping, and Cally winced. //I... apologise.// Very stiff, all emotion controlled out of existence. //I had forgotten that you were on duty. I had no right to disturb you.//

//You distracted me at an awkward moment,// Cally admitted. It had been at least partly her own fault. On Auron, she would have shielded herself against unexpected interruptions as a matter of course before undertaking any delicate work. Amery was not the only one to have allowed long isolation to make him careless.

She located the correct storage unit and slid open the front cover, crouching down to sort through the spare boards in the bottom rack. //There is a fault in the ship’s short-range communications,// she told him, swift fingers checking each board for a match against the one she sought, then pulling it aside to expose the next. //The power drain is uneven, and the surges put strain on the systems and distort incoming signals. I was trying to modify a data link in the bridge circuits while Medda traced the source of the problem, in order to save time — the Commander wishes it fixed before we reach Arnya beacon.//

//Why the beacon? Does it matter?//

Cally sent him a touch of wry humour. //That depends on whether there is a message for Commander Chu on the beacon or not.// She found the board she wanted, slid the rest back into the rack, and stood up in one swift movement. //What did you want? Have you discovered something?//

He had been worried about his work, she remembered; they had discussed it briefly, though she knew too little to be able to offer any real help. She pulled the front cover back down over the storage racks, and heard it click into place against the base of the unit as she reached the door. The lights dimmed behind her, and she began to hurry back towards the bridge.

//I’ve been carrying out comparative tests with the other samples — the ones that never left the _Gergovia_ — just as you suggested,// he was telling her, eagerly now, with a touch of an astonished gratitude from which she shrank. //The results are the same. Those apparent changes are consistent across the whole batch. The vials that were stolen in Blackport are identical to the others. There’s nothing wrong at all!//

//Unless all the samples are suffering from the same effect?// Cally pointed out reluctantly. //If the virus is unstable in some way — //

//Not like that. Not with a complete lack of variation across the spectrum.// Confident again, secure in his own field of knowledge; almost a little condescending. //But even if it is more than just a calibration error — don’t you see, this means it has nothing to do with us, nothing to do with what happened in Blackport? It means I can report my findings to Dr Andorf without endangering you....//

And so private and public obligations conveniently happen to balance out, Cally thought with a cynical cold thread of logic which appalled her. And his world sinks back into grateful stability. Like a child who finds a way to fulfil the boasts made to his sibling group without transgressing the rules.

That was not entirely fair, and she knew it. Amery genuinely cared about his work — had cared enough to leave Auron and make a gift of his skills to the Federation, where disease still devastated whole populations, and the hard-won techniques of the Auronar had the potential to prove the key to medical advances that could save millions. Both he and Cally had been driven to rebellion by Auron’s complacency in the face of suffering elsewhere in the galaxy; but Amery had perceived the Federation, for all its faults, as a system whose resources and wide-ranging contacts were the hope for civilised progress throughout the settled worlds, while she had seen it only as an instrument of corruption and oppression, to be destroyed or resisted to the last breath. They had both sought to save lives, and yet somehow it was she alone who had learned to kill in the name of ending the killing....

She carried the spare circuit board in the crook of an arm held protectively in front of her, swift light footsteps echoing back in the close confines of the passageway. All around her the fabric of the ship’s plating thrummed to the almost imperceptible stresses of the Time Distort drive, and somewhere just below the surface of her attention the currents of Amery’s eager relief were rippling half-heard through her mind. Without the intimacy of a closer link she had no real idea of his location — down on the laboratory deck would be her guess — but between telepaths such considerations had little relevance. He was there, close by, an accompanying presence on the telepathic plane, another mind whole and complete as the humans could never be, a reassurance of Auron, of who she really was; and yet for all their common heritage and shared idealism, she could not be at ease with him as she had been with Baldrin and Liady on Saurian Major, or with her lost companions of the _Liberator_.

Even at this present moment, now that he had relaxed his conscious control, beneath the cheerful verbal stream of biogenetic jargon he was sending her there lay waves of miserable longing amounting in effect to an unconscious emotional blackmail that set her on edge. Yet that in itself was more tolerable than the sick guilt and self-isolation that followed when she could bear it no longer and begged him to leave her alone.... Were they never to be comfortable with each other again, then? she wondered, with a fierce pang of loss at the memory of those hours of fellowship and growing trust shared with him in Blackport. Probably not; but it was a waste, a bitter waste.

It was almost with a sense of relief that she found herself in the wider passageway that led to the bridge doors. //I need to get back to work now,// she sent firmly, and took the opportunity to shield her mind against interruption as the heavy doors slid apart at her approach.

Something had changed during the few minutes she had been away. There was a new atmosphere on the bridge, an air almost of expectancy. Both Bultis and the young crewman in the co-pilot’s position beside him were leaning forward in their seats, the stiff torpor of a deep-space watch forgotten, and she half-imagined that she could hear a new note in the soft computer-murmur of the instrumentation in front of them. Her heart leapt in painful anticipation. Blake — Blake had found her —

Medda was still kneeling by the detached panels with her back to the door, up to her elbows in circuitry, but she rose stiffly and directed a glare at her assistant as she came in. Her broad face was flushed with effort.

“You caused the damage to these circuits, Istan —” another glare — “you can be the one to pull them out.” She plucked the replacement board from the younger woman’s hands, gathered up the roll of tools Istan had been using, and sat down without even a glance at the pilot in one of the vacant bridge positions to begin the necessary modifications, using the navigation panel to support her work. Her stubby fingers handled the probes with the skill and delicacy of half a lifetime.

Technically, as all on the bridge were well aware, she was not only endangering the navigation of the ship but also impeding the officer of the watch in the performance of his duty, and as such Pilot Officer Bultis was both nominally entitled and actively required to order her to carry out her work elsewhere. A fuming Bultis knew perfectly well that while in theory a commissioned pilot officer outranked a senior technician, in practice, when the tech in question held almost twenty years’ seniority over him, outweighed him by nearly twenty pounds of bone and muscle and had the respect of the commander himself, even a token reprimand would leave him looking completely ridiculous.

After a minute or two’s silence, Medda relented enough to glance over her shoulder at Istan, struggling in her turn with the apparently immovable circuitry inside the access panel. “Better use a filament cutter for that. Those boards haven’t been out since the ship was built, and the clip welds will have migrated.”

She located the tool in question and tossed it in the direction of the other woman, who caught it out of the air with unthinking grace. A quick inspection evidently confirmed the truth of Medda’s diagnosis, for she activated the cutter and began the time-consuming task of separating the damaged board from its neighbours, her hand steadied across her left forearm. Medda watched her for a moment longer, until she was satisfied that her junior’s attention was properly on the job this time — not that there was much damage she could do, with the power isolated from that section.

The senior tech sighed and turned back to her own work, positioning the bridging probe with meticulous accuracy over the twin data-flow inducers. She had no patience with the girl. Give her a good, solid, plodding, reliable worker any day, rather than a dozen of these talented sensitive types. Commander Chu wanted a report on the new tech once they reached orbit at Insecution, and Istan would have to shape up fast if she was expecting Medda to speak in her favour.

“Only forty hours to Insecution now, I believe, Mr Bultis?” she observed pointedly.

“Forty hours in-system from Arnya beacon, that’s standard.” There was a hint of malice in the pilot’s weary tone as he added: “I notified the Commander directly we picked up the beacon. Standing orders. He’ll be up on the bridge within half an hour and he’ll be expecting that communication dump. Better get short-range comms fixed, Medda.”

Cally’s hand, tracing the filament down the side of the last set of clips, remained steady, but her head came up sharply. “Sir —” she was unsure of the pilot’s precise rank, but flattery never hurt — “was it the Arnya beacon, then, that you just detected?”

Bultis twisted round in his seat to stare at her, then grinned. “That’s right, you weren’t here, were you? We came into range of the beacon about five minutes ago. I’m surprised you didn’t pick up the buzz when you came in — this place is always half-dead by comparison when we’re in deep space.”

The board came loose under her hands and she leaned forward to lift it free, her face hidden from the others. She had been foolish to jump to the conclusion that the _Liberator_ had been sighted; foolish, and wrong. So why was her heart beating so fast? Why was the disappointment mingled with a queer sense of stifled relief?


	20. In the Face of Ruin

Miriam clasped cold hands at her breast, looking down the length of her makeshift hospital, and felt despair. They had been totally unprepared for this. In the year since Dr Lenka’s death had forced her to become the unofficial medic among the rebels, she had rarely been called to cope with more than a couple of patients at a time, and none with injuries beyond her skills. The harsh realities of raiding from such a distant base saw to that. Few of the badly wounded ever made it back from the lowlands into Miriam’s care.

But their isolated life here in the Barrier Mountains had helped to keep them free of disease and the other infections that periodically swept the enclosed cities of the plains — until now. She had done everything she could. Dr Lenka’s medical texts had only confirmed the fear that had come upon her from the moment the first case of oral sores had been reported; the same fear that had looked back at her from the eyes of the patient himself, fear that was common to all those who had lived through the last few months on Insecution. It was the Plague. The Plague had finally come to them.

She had struggled to cope, over the course of that day and the nightmare days that followed, as more and more cases came in, until now almost a third of their number were sick, lying disfigured and feverish in this hastily-commandeered chamber in a pitiful attempt at isolation that had been doomed before it had ever begun. Their community was too small, and the incubation period too long, for her to have any hope that they might manage to contain the spread of the plague.

Those who were sick needed intensive care in order to give them a chance of survival. They needed sophisticated equipment which the rebels simply did not possess, and which neither Miriam nor any of her assistants had the training to use. Above all, they needed constant, unsleeping, individual attention, and of that there could be no possibility. There were too many patients, and already far too few capable of nursing them. Crushed limbs, weapon-burns, head wounds or rampant gangrene she could have handled. _Lerva_ -plague, sooner or later, would kill them all.

The medic’s head came up sharply at the sound of heavy footsteps in the quarantined tunnel behind her, and she turned, frowning. But the harsh words died on her lips as the unauthorised visitor passed through one of the pools of light cast by the lamps strung low along the walls, and she recognised the familiar wild grey mane and upright bearing of Endymion Wright. She went out to meet him with only a quick glance back into the cavern at the long rows of improvised beds, and the handful of weary men and women who moved among them. Even if she could not keep him from coming here — and she was guiltily aware that her prohibition had not been as whole-hearted as it should — she could at least do her best to keep him away from direct contagion. Unconsciously, tired shoulders straightened as she passed through the partitions at the entry to the hospital, and one hand stole up to tuck her own grey-streaked braids more neatly into their tight coil.

But when he came to her she held up warning hands, backing away to keep him at arm’s-length. “Now, you keep clear, Mion. I don’t trust the sterilisation field, and if you fall ill on us we’re all done for.”

“Come on, Miriam, I’m not that vital.” Wright smiled, rather sadly. “You managed here perfectly well for years without me.”

“You don’t know what it was like here, before. You don’t know how much of a difference it made when you came.”

She’d been one of the party that found him, curled semi-conscious and badly burned in the snow where he’d been flung — or else crawled — clear of the smoking wreckage of his flyer. Her skills had probably saved his life during the endless dragging journey back to base and Dr Lenka, and as the doctor’s chief assistant she’d played a major part in the long recovery that followed. It had been Miriam who spoke in defence of his unlikely story that he had come to Insecution in order to join the rebels, had flown out from the city in a stolen cargo flyer specifically to seek them out in the mountains and had attempted a landing when he happened to catch sight of the raiding party on the surface, only to lose control in the treacherous fresh-fallen snow and overturn his craft into the ravine where they had found it.

He had told her the truth, she believed; or certainly as much of the truth as he had ever told any of them. They had got to know each other very well in the enforced intimacy of those long weeks of pain, and he had never concealed the fact that he had been a high-ranking Federation officer — too high-ranking to be thrown away on a simple spying mission — with a detailed knowledge of tactics and defences that he was prepared to share with the rebels in return for sanctuary from the Federation forces hunting him.

The Council had been united in their suspicion; but they had allowed him to go out on a raid almost before his scars were healed, with a knife at his back ready for the first signs of betrayal. The raid was a complete success, as all too few of their expeditions had been in those days, and so was the next, and the next. Within a month Wright was organising forays against the main Federation compound itself, which they had never dared to touch. Within three months he had drilled the fighters into disciplined groups that could take on local forces at even odds and come away without a scratch. Within six months he was being asked to take decisions that had always been referred to the Council, and returning swift judgements that were both popular and justified. Never once had he given any hint of regretting his old loyalties. The Council’s authority was a shadow of what it had once been, and Endymion Wright had long since become undisputed rebel leader.

In the rough, home-patched clothes they all wore, with his springy grey hair as wild as the full beard common to most of the men, he looked every inch a ruffian. Only his off-world accent and unconscious military carriage betrayed the fact that he must once have been an urbane, shaven bureaucrat like the Federation officials occasionally depicted on the viscasts. She wondered, sometimes, what kind of man he had been in his old life, and whether she would have liked him if she had known him then — as if, as an Insecution assembly-plant supervisor, she would ever have had the chance! But he trusted her as he trusted few others, and she had never sought to jeopardise that trust by asking.

“We spent fifteen years running away,” she told him stubbornly. “I won’t say we didn’t have grand dreams when we started, because we did. But soon enough we were spending our years hiding just to survive. I was still young when I left the city, and now look at me — I’m over fifty, Mion, and the highlight of my life before you came was the day we planted a stench grenade outside the entrance to the Governor’s office half an hour before the Federation representative came to negotiate a trade treaty! It’s only the mountains that saved us — the mountains, and the helpers inside the cities who risked their lives to bring us food and information, and smuggle out any young hotheads who’d got themselves in trouble and needed a place to run.”

“Now if only I’d had the sense to deduce the existence of your helpers and try to make contact with them when I arrived,” Wright agreed cheerfully, “I could have saved myself a long cold flight — and avoided smashing myself up into the bargain like a green cadet when I arrived.” His hand went up to his cheek in an unconscious gesture that had once been old habit, his fingers brushing the faded scars still visible above the edge of his beard.

Miriam flinched at the reminder. She had always blamed herself bitterly for the scarring that had distorted what must, in his prime, have been considerable good looks.

He noticed the direction of her gaze, sighed, let the betraying hand fall, and reached out to catch her by the shoulders despite her resistance, drawing her close against him. “Miriam, there was nothing you could have done to save my face, with the equipment you had. I’ve seen a few burns in my time, you know. I do know what I’m talking about.” He grinned suddenly. “And you’ve got to admit it’s a wonderful disguise. Though not quite the technique I’d have chosen, if I’d known.”

Miriam turned her face aside into his jerkin, and felt his beard gently brush the top of her head. “You shouldn’t be holding me like this,” she protested weakly, and felt his grip tighten around her as she had known it would.

“Don’t tell me you really believe I’m not carrying the plague already.” His voice was soft above her. “I spent most of the afternoon with Vena two days ago. She had the sores this morning. Half the people who came with me to pick up supplies the day before are already down with it. Nothing I do now is going to make any difference. It’s just a matter of time.”

He sighed again. “You know, I really thought it was safe to break isolation. We couldn’t have held on much longer without supplies, but I could have squeezed out another month if I’d insisted. But it was so long since there’d been a case reported in the lowlands, and we were all so tired of short rations and broken equipment — myself included.... Three supply runs — and now this. Not exactly a glorious end, is it?”

Miriam raised her head at that, catching his gaze in her sudden fierce stare. “Mion, you’re not to give up now. I won’t have it.”

Wiry brows snapped together in exasperation, and he flung the old argument back at her. “Then we have to move!”

“Pack up and move now, and you’ll kill half those that are sick sooner rather than later.” She pulled away from him into the centre of the passage, folding her arms defiantly as if to interpose herself as a barrier between him and her hospital. “And even if we abandon most of the base here, camp on bare rock when we arrive — how far do you think we’d get before those that still look healthy start going down under the strain, and blaming you for making them handle the ones with the plague plain on them? Or do you plan to leave those that can’t walk, and those that fall along the way?”

Silent between them was the knowledge that she would be staying with the sick, whatever happened.

“The group’s in no fit state to shift to a new base —” one hand crept up to check her braids again — “any medic would tell you the same. Anyhow, the government never found us yet.“

“That’s because you always kept moving; we’ve been in this same base for months, Miriam, and if they track us down now they’ll find us in no fit state to defend it either....” But neither of them had anything to say that had not already been said half-a-dozen times over on the previous day or the day before, and Wright let the argument fall. He nodded in the direction of the hospital, dimly visible through the frosted partitions behind her. “How are they?”

Miriam’s face froze. “Magda and young Lerrik died last night. There’ll be more.” She tried to keep the betraying gruffness from her voice. “Mion —”

He nodded. “I’ll take care of the funerals.”

She had turned away already, beginning to pace across the tunnel, her hands twisted unconsciously at her breast again; three steps and back, three steps and back.... “If only there was a chance —” she burst out, not looking at him — “if there was just a chance for them — something, anything I could use to fight back —”

And then she did look round, caught frozen in dawning hope as she began to take in what he was telling her. Too late for fragile Magda and the son who had inherited her weak heart; but for all those who still lived, it just might be the miracle they needed so desperately.

“Experimental or not, it makes no difference,” she interrupted him at last. “You know that as well as I do. If someone’s come up with a cure for _lerva_ -plague and we’ve got a chance to get our hands on it before it’s too late, than there’s no choice at all to make. If it doesn’t work — even if we all grow two heads — we can hardly be much worse off than we are now. When’s this convoy due through the pass?”

“Any day now, according to the viscasts — the ship’s overdue already. We’re monitoring all spaceport transmissions, and I’ll send out an ambush party as soon as we have definite information.” Wright shook his head in bewilderment. “Miriam, believe me, I’d no idea you didn’t know. The anti-virus story has been all over the viscasts for days — it’s not so long since the end of the epidemic in the lowlands, and anything to do with the plague is still big news — I just assumed you’d heard....”

Miriam was frowning, barely listening to him. “What if they don’t land at Yakostonok?” she asked softly, thinking about it. “What if they use the main spaceport at Verno? They won’t need to use the pass then. The convoy won’t come anywhere near us. We’ve only ever managed to raid Verno once, and with the Federation negotiators on planet there’s bound to be high security there already. Using Yakostonok doesn’t make sense.”

“The official version says Yakostonok —” he shrugged — “and I’m gambling that it’s true. We can’t crack Verno, not with almost half the group sick. The pass is our only chance.” Clear hazel eyes met her gaze from beneath wiry brows, and she read knowledge and rueful acceptance there. “As you said, Miriam, we don’t have any choice.”

Somehow, the miracle seemed too convenient; and yet without it, no matter what she tried to pretend, they were as good as done for anyway. She sighed. “When you send your ambush party out — best tell them to be careful.”

Wright nodded. “I shall.”

* * *

“Perhaps I did not make myself sufficiently clear, Batracho.” The Supreme Commander’s voice was deceptively soft. “The Federation has invested a great deal of time and money into the Soteros project. Under normal circumstances, the final stage of testing would take place using hand-picked control subjects in a designated experimental war zone. Due to the interesting nature of your... political problem... I allowed myself to be persuaded to give my personal authorization for the operation to be relocated to Insecution. If I find any further cause to regret that decision, I assure you that I shall take a _personal_ interest in the consequences — both for you and for your administration.”

She leaned forward, both hands upon the desk. “Insecution needs this alliance. The Federation does not. If the Federation had any real use for Insecution, we would come in and take it. I suggest you bear that in mind, Deputy-Governor.” A single contemptuous glance silenced his protests. “Perhaps you would care to explain — this?”

The printout lay on the immaculate surface between them like an accusation. Servalan rested one long finger on it gently, and watched Batracho sweat. He caught up the slick pages almost before her hand was withdrawn, scanning feverishly down first one column, then another. If she had needed proof that the Governor’s Office had had prior information of the transaction in question, his face alone would have confirmed it.

The quivering moustache stiffened into indignation, and he took a deep breath, evidently intending to bluster it out. “This record here is a standard confidential commercial credit transfer! By what right —”

“A credit transfer via the Federation banking cartel,” Servalan cut in smoothly. “Transmitted through the Federation communications network, to a Federation citizen.” Did they really believe on Insecution that their financial system was independent of routine Federation monitoring? “As you say, a standard commercial transaction. Unless you happen to be aware that Welong Chu is none other than the commander of the scientific ship _Gergovia_ , due to make orbit almost two days ago, and currently still several inexplicable hours from making planetfall. Unless you happen to have intercepted this message —” she held out an imperious hand for the return of the dossier, underlining a section halfway down the third page with one forefinger — “uploaded to the local communications beacon by a certain Director Vaturian of Yakostonok spaceport, and also addressed to Commander Chu. Unless you happen to consider the Soteros operation important enough to have dedicated an entire section of staff on board the command ship _Amritsar_ to compiling a report on every event affecting its completion, however minor!”

She gave one final vicious flick to the plasticised pages and slammed the report down on the desk in front of her so that the gust of air made him flinch. “Why was I not informed of this two days ago, when the _Gergovia_ first failed to make her appearance? Why has no action been taken? And just what does your Spaceport Director have to gain by bribing ships’ captains to delay their arrival?”

“Supreme Commander —” Batracho was practically wringing his hands, all attempt at bluster abandoned — “my own enquiries only uncovered the incident this morning. And it was an entirely understandable error — a slight over-enthusiasm — but Vaturian had no reason to believe that the shipment was urgent, and historically, innovative business practices in the spaceport consortium have always been encouraged. We are a poor planet, and we are so very dependent on private enterprise here....”

“One of the first things that will change as soon as you become full members of the Federation. I think you will find Federation Space Security far more competent.” And very much easier to influence when necessary. Servalan’s lips curved in disdain. Bribery... how crude. “Meanwhile, I am still at a loss to understand how Director Vaturian expected his consortium to benefit from his... innovative practices.”

Her voice had regained its former softness, but this time Batracho failed to pick up the warning signals. He gave a slight smile, smoothing his moustache. “As a matter of fact, it really is rather ingenious. You see, traditionally the two spaceports, Verno and Yakostonok, have both been under the same management. But last year two of the smaller consortia combined their resources in a successful joint bid for the contract to run the minor port, Yakostonok, as an independent enterprise. Naturally, when they actually managed to obtain the contract there proved to be a certain amount of difficulty in reaching an agreement as to how the financing and profits of the joint business were to be divided.”

“Naturally. The well-known efficiencies of free enterprise, I take it.”

The smile broadened. “Quite. Neither corporate partner was prepared to delegate any part of the operations to the other for fear they would somehow be cheated. Eventually they came up with a novel solution — complete reduplication on a ten-day rota system. Each consortium trains and funds its own staff to cover the work shifts during its allocated rota period. Each covers its relevant share of the costs. Strangely enough the scheme has proved amazingly successful.”

“Really?”

“Well — not quite.” He had relaxed into a fine jovial good humour, and now he leaned across with the conspiratorial air of the raconteur. “You see, they made one slight miscalculation. Yakostonok on its own is only marginally profitable. The location’s all wrong for access to the main population centres — you’ve seen that — and commercial traffic on the other side of the mountains is very limited. Without the redirected traffic from Verno, the spaceport generates barely enough income to cover two-thirds of the bid Vaturian and his colleagues made in order to obtain the contract — certainly not enough to cover the whole. However, since Vaturian’s consortium is liable for only half, it seems that the ingenious fellow finds it worthwhile to influence the captains of such out-system ships as do use the port to do so during the ten-day periods when their arrival will contribute to the bank balance of his own backers and not to that of his unfortunate partners —” Here he went so far as to lay a hand on her arm, only to blanch as the Supreme Commander sprang to her feet, eyes blazing.

“And _this_ — this failed speculative gambler, this penny-pinching profiteer — this is the man who has dared to delay a Federation ship for two whole days merely in order to cheat his own colleagues; and you consider it _amusing_?”

“Madam — madam, I assure you —”

“Vaturian will be dismissed.” Her tone brooked no argument. “At once. If he were a Federation citizen, I would have him sold into the slave pits. And you may inform this spaceport consortium of yours that there will be no landing, at Yakostonok or otherwise. A shuttle will be sent up to the _Gergovia_ to collect the necessary equipment and personnel. Is that clear?”

As for Commander Welong Chu.... But no; she would not break him, not for the moment at least. Knowingly or not, the unspeakable Vaturian had just given her the very hold over stiff-necked Chu she needed. Every man had his lever: lust, ambition, revenge... fear was the oldest and the most effective of all. And thanks to the report from the _Gergovia_ transmitted this morning by Dr Andorf, she would have some additional very specific requirements to enforce on Chu in the matter of the shuttle’s personnel.

On the other side of the desk, the Deputy-Governor was still bleating away in some attempt at excuse or explanation. Servalan did not trouble herself to listen. She drew her gown more closely about her. “Is that clear?” she repeated, each clearly-enunciated syllable biting like acid.

She had underestimated Batracho again. There was steel beneath the bluster; he stood his ground. “Supreme Commander, I must protest! Such high-handed action would play right into the hands of the isolationists. Director Vaturian had no way to know you took a special interest in this particular flight — no intention of insult either to yourself or to the Federation. And after all, the delay was not so very significant. A poorly-stressed drive, a navigational oversight — anything might cause a ship to come in two days late. We were impatient, but hardly seriously concerned. It is not as if any harm was caused to the project —”

“No harm?” For a moment Servalan had an undiplomatic urge to snatch something up and hurl it into his pompous, self-satisfied face. Had the fat fool not read the reports of his own Intelligence section? “They are dying up there, Batracho. They are escaping us!” And, as he blinked at her: “Apparently your rebels practice burial by exposure — a custom common among primitive mountain peoples, I understand. A standard surveillance flight yesterday caught sight of the evidence of two funerals. The bodies had already been partly consumed by scavengers, but according to the pilot the plague lesions were unmistakable.

“Immediately Intelligence realised the significance of his report, copies were passed both to the Governor’s Office, where they evidently sank without trace, and to Commander Venn in his rôle as my personal liaison officer. The bodies were retrieved under my orders yesterday evening and brought back for identification and autopsy in a sealed mortuary. I expect the results —” she glanced at the time-display — “any minute now. Meanwhile, you might be interested to learn the unanimous verdict of the retrieval team — that there is no doubt whatsoever that both individuals died of advanced _lerva_ -plague!”

“But the fifteen-day survival period promised by your scientists?” Batracho protested.

“Which do you find more convincing?” Servalan enquired with deadly sweetness. “A scientist’s promise — or a corpse?” If Andorf’s modified plague strain had really malfunctioned, she would have him and his team hauled down here, at gun-point if necessary, to explain themselves. There was always a shortage of the educated, superior grade test subjects required for mental manipulation research....

And yet even that minor satisfaction was denied her while the _Gergovia_ had still not reached orbit! Her fingers tightened unconsciously among the folds of her gown, its shimmering beading crushed painfully against her flesh. The scheme had seemed so elegant, so satisfying, when her tacticians had first presented it to her; and it had lent itself so perfectly to the further elaboration of her own plans for Varro... and now she could see the whole over-intricate structure threatening to come crashing down about her head, destroying Varro along with it as he tossed and turned away the dregs of his life in some deep-buried cave, escaping her into an easy oblivion. Oh, she wanted him dead, dead and silenced, but not without the knowledge of whose hand it was that had brought him down. Not before every strand of the deadly web had been revealed.

Her tone was icy. “I need that ship _now_. I want a suitably-prepared crawler standing by at Yakostonok, and I want a shuttle launched immediately the _Gergovia_ makes orbit.” She had her own preparations to make, she remembered with a start; clothes, equipment, the three-hour flight out to the pass — yet if Varro were dead or dying... if, if, if! She flashed a sudden glittering vicious smile at Batracho. “And I want Vaturian on that shuttle — spreadeagled over the nose cone as it takes off.” There was still a certain pleasure after all, she found, in watching his face as he tried to decide whether or not she had meant that literally.

A discreet buzz to her left drew her attention to the moulded screen of the data terminal. The screen flickered; an unshielded surface transmission. The report from the autopsy, almost certainly. She sank down again behind the desk, glancing across at Batracho, whose expression had abruptly ceased to amuse her in the slightest.

“Now, Deputy-Governor, I believe I requested your co-operation in a matter of considerable significance to your planet?” It was the Federation Supreme Commander speaking, the voice that could launch a thousand gunships, and he stiffened onto the verge of hostility.

“Madam?”

The terminal buzzed again, insistently. Servalan reached out and laid a hand on the scan-plate, acknowledging the call. Her eyes never left Batracho. “Oh, I think we understand each other.” She smiled, let the smile fade deliberately. “For the sake of Insecution and of your cherished alliance, I suggest that you contact the spaceport at Yakostonok and ensure that the preparations I recommended are set in train....” Immediately. The word lay unvoiced and unnecessary between them as the doors to the suite slid pointedly open behind him.

Still he hesitated. “Madam — about Vaturian —”

“I leave Vaturian entirely to you. You will naturally do as you think best.” First the iron fist, then the velvet glove. Allow him to believe he had contrived to gain a concession from her, and he would come fawning back to heel the moment she needed him. It was almost pathetically easy. She dismissed him from her thoughts the moment he left her presence.

“Federation Supreme Commander,” she told the waiting terminal as soon as she was alone, without bothering to activate the visual. “Naturally I wish to hear the report, dolt!... then put him on.... Doctor?... By all means.... Both of them? You are sure?... And for a healthy individual?... I see. Thank you, Doctor. Yes, send Venn up to me with the data.”

She cut the connection and leaned back in her seat. Her lips curved. Oh, Andra, was this really all you could find for your heroic campaign of liberation? — a genetic-defective woman who fled her city in order to be able to conceive an illegal defective child? Almost, I pity you; you, who tolerated only excellence, forced to minister to an army of cripples and misfits! Do you have a whole nursery up there, I wonder?

She savoured this delicious picture for a moment, her smile widening, before summoning Allard. It was a pity that two of the rebels, perhaps more, were dead, but the pathologist had assured her that without the cardiac deformity a normal adult would be in no particular danger at this stage of the infection. Half a dozen repentant rebels more or less would make no difference to the eventual impact of the scheme, after all, and as for her own plans, they hinged around the life — and death — of only one man....

“Commander Venn and I will be leaving within the next half hour, Allard. Behind the barracks in the Third Urban Zone you will find a troop carrier. Take my bags there and load them with the rest of the equipment. No-one will question you. You may inform the driver that he is to wait as arranged until I arrive.”

There was one other important matter to be considered. She tilted her head on one side, eyes half-closed, mentally reviewing her wardrobe. “I shall require a travelling costume. High-collared, I think, with a broad-waisted tunic and padded lining. Also matching boots. Select something suitable and have it laid out in my personal chamber before you leave.”

She rose gracefully to her feet as the servant slipped back into the inner rooms, gazing across at the abstract patterns on the wall-screen without really seeing them. Even given the slow flight speed of the troop carrier, she would be arriving at the crest of the pass some time before the shuttle from the _Gergovia_ could touch down at the spaceport; and local Met forecast fresh snow in the mountains, which should cover up any tracks they might leave. The observation module had been in place for over a week now, and should be entirely undetectable.... Yes. It should work.

Servalan leaned over the desk, set the controls for relayed transmission, and dictated, with considerable enjoyment, concise and highly specific instructions to the _Gergovia_ ’s commander on the composition of the landing party he was to send down. It was a pity about the young man; but her plans for him had not as yet progressed beyond the nebulous, and while his contribution to the Soteros Project had been useful, it was at an end. As Dr Andorf had so rightly put it in the last paragraph of his report, sometimes one just had to cut one’s losses.

A second, pre-emptive message on the same subject went to Yakostonok, via insecure surface channels. The Supreme Commander deliberately omitted to encipher it.


	21. Confidence

The interior of the troop carrier was the same cavernous reeking cylindrical hold that she remembered from the ground missions of her cadet days. She’d hated ground missions. Hour after hour spent droning across unknown landscapes, cadets and troopers packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the same hold, with the all-pervasive odour of stale sweat and raw metal working its way into the uniforms of future Space Commanders and enlisted twenty-year men alike. She had endured the statutory minimum of three missions, under protest, after which she’d pulled all the strings her family’s wealth and influence could provide to avoid ever having to undergo another.

The intervening years had almost erased the distasteful memories from her mind; but the first musty waft of air as she descended into the interior had brought it all back in entirely unwelcome detail. This battered old flyer could almost have been the twin of the one in which she’d sweated out those undignified hours, despite the fact that there were only a handful of men in the hold instead of a hundred or more. The main difference lay in the temperature. Thanks to the Insecution climate, in addition to being uncomfortably stale-smelling and numbingly noisy, the accommodation inside the troop carrier was freezing cold.

In spite of her thick outer tunic, Servalan shivered, nestling her chin more deeply into the elusive warmth of the silk scarf she wore wound about her throat under the high collar. She cast a venomous sidelong glance at Venn, seated next to her in the somewhat dubious privilege of the single private cabin, located aft of the main hold and in consequence almost directly exposed to the nerve-shattering drone of the thrust engines. Her companion appeared completely oblivious both to the cold and to the Supreme Commander’s discomfort, staring straight in front of him with the vacuous expression that was either a genuine reflection of tortuously slow mental processes or else a highly effective shield for the keen mind of a trained agent. After all these days of close observation she still had no idea which.

“Tell me, Venn —” she pitched her voice sharply to cut through the white noise that seemed to fill the air between them, clouding both thought and hearing — “what message did you leave in the end at the Governor’s Office to explain my absence from tonight’s reception?”

She saw his lips move, but the reply was inaudible. A second attempt, in response to her growing impatience, was louder but no more distinct. “Headache,” she made out finally, from a muffled bellow. “Supreme Commander not to be disturbed.”

Servalan’s features contracted in a moment of pure fury before she regained mastery of herself. Incompetence on that level — if incompetence it was — was tantamount to mutiny. She had been at some pains to impress upon Venn that above all it should not become known that she had been absent from the capital, let alone present on this expedition; and even on Insecution the most petty of officials would recognise such a transparent excuse for what it was. Rumours of intrigue would be flying —

She halted. After a moment she smiled, slowly. Intrigue, yes; but given the nature of the excuse, and the reputation she had been at some pains to build up during the endless round of entertainments in honour of the Federation, the local dignitaries would hardly assume the elegant, devastating Supreme Commander to be engaged in _military_ intrigue. Speculation would soon acquire the status of fact. Failure to make an appearance outside her own suite would be taken as proof positive that she remained inside it. The very clumsiness of the deception was more misleading than the most elaborate smoke-screen he could have devised. It was brilliant; or stupid.

Conniving spy, loyal blunderer, idiot-savant — or just a mediocre officer with no social graces and more luck than judgement? She watched, but could not guess. Ultimately, it mattered little. She had made sure of that. Like all those involved in this scheme of hers, he had one unquestioned virtue at least. If need be, he was eminently... disposable.

They sat in silence in the drab cabin. The heavy-bodied craft flew on, mile after mile northward across cold, barren grasslands and straggling thickets of native growth. Twice it passed over herds of short-legged furred creatures, low enough to set them whistling in alarm and bolting for shelter. The sound of the engines rolled over the uplands in their wake, a trail of doom, if there had been anyone to hear. There was not. Even after so many years of settlement, human culture had barely brushed the surface of Insecution. Humans stayed crowded safely inside their domed cities or cultivated their imported high-yield crops in the meagre warmth of the equatorial belt, while a few hardy souls worked the mines north of Yakostonok on the other side of the Border Mountains in search of the low-grade minerals the colony so desperately needed. Elsewhere, the surface of the planet was as deserted as ever it had been before the first human ship had landed. A few native animals, a few scavenging flying creatures, sparse scrub growth on thin acid soil; every living thing seemed to seek to escape the constant cold winds that swept across the plains and drove snow down from the peaks of the mountains and across the tundra beyond. In its camouflage livery of grey and brown, the troop carrier and the handful of men within it passed low and swift across the landscape like the rumbling shadow of an oncoming storm.

Despite the cold, Servalan found herself lulled into a waking half-dream. The monotony of the flight and the constant drone of the engines almost at the edge of hearing conspired together to set her mind wandering away from politics and contingency plans towards the more enjoyable topic of just what she would say to Varro, during those few minutes that were all she could allow herself for the fond reunion... and then, inexorably, away from that pleasant future prospect, back again towards memories of the past, of her own cadet days.

That first year at the Academy had been a rude awakening. For the first time in her life there had been rules and regulations that actually applied to her, exercises to perform that she could not simply stroll through with ease, competition from other cadets who were her intellectual equals — and instructors who demanded obedience and at least a nominal show of respect. Wealth and Family connections could get her so far, but no further. Ambition had led her to the Academy; pride had kept her there. But in order to keep the pre-eminent place to which she was accustomed, the wilful, privileged cadet had been forced to learn to work, and to work hard.

She’d turned out results good enough to win attention from the instructors she affected to despise — and resented every minute of it. The other cadets had been rivals, cronies, toadies, but never friends. And Andra Varro... had been the Principal. Authority personified; authority at arm’s reach. No more real to the first-year cadets, Alpha-grades though they were, than the then President himself. Their world was bounded by barracks, by over-worked and impatient instructors, and by the plotting of petty rebellion in an attempt to assert their independence of both.

She had shaken the dust of the Federation Space Academy off her feet long ago, had risen far and fast and never thought of it again. It was only the journey in the troop carrier that had brought those days back to mind.... But she knew that was not true. She had been remembering the Academy more and more often recently, and it was the imminent confrontation with Varro that was responsible. The revenge she had nursed so lovingly for so long was finally coming to fruition; but in seeking to repay the utter humiliation he had exacted from her, she had succeeded only too well in reawakening her own memories.

Servalan moved sharply, almost convulsively, and frowned. For a moment Venn’s placid and oblivious bulk at the other end of the padded bench seemed oddly reassuring. She glanced across at him, pitching her voice to carry. “Your Endymion Wright has been on the run for a long time, Commander, but here on Insecution his luck has finally run out.”

Venn’s eyes lifted briefly, ponderously, from his contemplation of the cabin wall opposite before settling back into the same incurious gaze, but she sensed that he was listening. There was something restful, in a way, about such undemanding silence. For once she felt an urge to confide.

Her own eyes were half-veiled by dark lashes, and her face was serene, revealing nothing. The Supreme Commander might have been discussing strategy with a subordinate; perhaps, in her own mind, she was.

“There was a certain... secret... known only to myself and to the four others involved.” Servalan studied the gloved hands poised in her lap, reflectively. “The four were men of considerable rank, even at that period. I was a cadet. The affair was to their discredit as well as mine. I could have exposed them — but in doing so I would have made myself an object of ridicule, and they knew it. They counted on my silence; and for a long time they had it. I am quite certain that within months the cares of office had obliterated even the name of the cadet involved. After all, by public standards it was really a very minor peccadillo....”

Not by the movement of one muscle did she betray the fury behind her schooled mask. Humiliated, discounted as a threat, and then forgotten! Even if she had been no more than the spoilt little girl Varro had taken her for, such treatment would have been dangerously casual. He had made a major misjudgment; and now, finally, like the others, he would pay.

“I was a bright cadet, and my family were influential. Once I had finally graduated from the Academy, promotion came swiftly. It was only two years later that I was offered a position as deputy controller of Auriga-1 under Lorne, the Governor of the Auriga-Tiralis quadrant. He was eventually executed, but at the time he was high in favour with the Administration, and the prospects seemed good.”

She smiled, as if at some private jest, her eyes veiled entirely for a moment as the long lashes swept down, and glanced sidelong at her companion. Venn’s stolid gaze had shifted from the wall to his own boots, but he seemed to find them equally fascinating. His belly was spread comfortably across his lap, and his expression was one of slightly puzzled rumination, like one who contemplates the mysteries of his own digestion. She could detect no sign that he was paying any more attention to her than to the sound of the engines that filled the compartment, but somehow she had the impression that every word was being filed away deep inside that slow mind without comment or judgement.

She checked the time surreptitiously. At least two hours to go....

“I chose to stay in Space Command,” she told him. “Only a fool chooses politics as a quick route to power — only a fool, or a gambler, trusts his destiny to the favour of his superiors. When Lorne fell, he would have taken me down with him, and Lorne was a gambler. Every time he won, he played for higher stakes. Eventually I knew he would lose — and lose everything. And so he did.”

Ironically enough, as a junior Staff officer Servalan had found herself part of the escort group detailed to convey the Governor of Auriga-Tiralis to the court-martial that was ostensibly to clear his name. The verdict had been a foregone conclusion. By that time, even Lorne knew it was hopeless. He had been little more than an empty husk, all power and influence gone, nothing left of the famous magnetism that had won him the worship of the lower grades save a pitiful attempt at bonhomie that had the ship-crews sniggering. She had learned her lesson well. Without the backing of armed force, power was as worthless as popularity, and as swiftly lost. Control of Space Command was the key to control of the Federation.

“It was almost another five years before I was in a position to move against any of the four who shared my secret. By that time, things had changed. I had enough rank and influence to make the whole scandal public — and more to lose by it than any of them.” Aided by bribery, talent, nepotism and the delivery of the occasional stab in the back, her trajectory through Space Command had been rapid enough to draw a great deal of attention. A public accusation against Varro would have dented his image; but it would have made a laughing-stock of Servalan.

Her mouth hardened. “I wanted more than revenge. I wanted to ensure their silence. Ultimately, there was only one certain way to do so.

“Two of the four had become high-ranking members of the Civil Administration. I prepared evidence against them, and personally led a squad into the apartments of each. Tragically, although the evidence was later established to be unfounded, they both died... resisting arrest. But they remembered me, before the end.” A sweet smile. “It was quite touching.”

They had begged her on their knees at the last, just as she had been made to beg, ten years earlier. It had amused her to promise them mercy, to let them see what waited outside the door — and then watch their faces as they died.

She crossed one knee over the other, clasping her hands lightly around it and leaning back. “The other two were serving officers, nominally at least, and at that time my superiors in direct line of command. I had no authority to take pre-emptive action against them without the verdict of a properly convened tribunal, and insufficient influence to obtain such a verdict.” More to the point, the newly-elevated President possessed a highly-trained personal security force, while the Principal of the Academy lived and worked in the midst of several thousand cadets; nor would ‘death while resisting arrest’ constitute a plausible fate for either of them. At eighteen, she had wanted only revenge. But time and hurt had taught her to rule her passions, to cloak menace in honeyed words and to crave power for its own sake. There was no point in revenge, after all, if one could not survive to enjoy its fruits.

“I made contact with the higher-ranking of the two. He was not yet secure in power, and he was afraid of scandal. I... persuaded him that he needed the other man silenced as much as I did. He offered to make a bargain: personal authorization to dispose of my enemy on his behalf, in return for military support to help keep him in office. I agreed. He was only a minor player from my point of view. I was willing to forego revenge in return for power. It was the fourth man — Varro — who had started it all. He was the one I wanted; and now at last I had him.”

Remembered fury flickered in her eyes. “Somehow, he got warning of what I intended. He disappeared: out of the Academy, off the planet, out of the Federation entirely. He had wealth, position and influence, and he abandoned them all overnight. It was the one thing I hadn’t counted on, and he must have known. The spacecasts were full of his disappearance for days — but somehow he got away with it. He managed to vanish without trace.”

Varro had lost — sacrificed — his career and his privileges; but he had contrived to turn that into a victory. He had _defeated_ her on her own ground. She had no intention of allowing him to escape.

“I was ordered to abandon the search, and officially I did so. Instead, I used my own resources to locate him. It was difficult, but not impossible. He grew careless. He tried to get news from contacts at the Academy. Within a year I had traced him to a prosperous neutral planet in the Third Sector, where he was acting as strategist to the local rulers. I laid my plans carefully... too carefully. By the time I struck, he had gone. I missed him by hours, but it was enough. He vanished again; and this time it was very effective.

“It was not until after the President was... induced... to appoint me Supreme Commander that I had access to the level of classified information that I needed in order to pick up his trail again, and by that time it was long since cold. Also, I had other concerns... and I had to move carefully. Varro was clever, and he had very little left to lose. On the other hand, he turned out to have had more secrets that we cadets at the Academy had ever dreamed of; and one of them provided me with a tool that happened already to be almost ideal for my purpose. A little more suggestion, a little manipulation, and I had the bait I needed — and a truly appropriate weapon. All that I had to do was track down Varro one last time.”

It had taken her years, even with all Space Command at her disposal, but then in truth she had attached no great urgency to the task. Varro, lying low, could do little enough to harm her, and as she had just admitted, a Supreme Commander had other, more pressing concerns than a personal matter more than a dozen years old, however much it might rankle. She had pursued the search in odd moments, content to savour the knowledge of her long-prepared revenge. And then, within a few months, all the pieces had fallen into place at once.

Insecution’s renewed application for full membership status had brought the planet to her attention, and the strangely familiar tactics recently introduced by its rebels had prompted her to fill in the last few links charting Varro’s flight to utter obscurity, confirmation following close upon guesswork. Thanks to newly-introduced genetic engineering techniques, the Soteros Project had reached an unexpected successful conclusion. And Travis’ bungling of the Orac affair had left both her political opponents and Central Security casting around more and more widely for potentially embarrassing material to use against her.

Travis had been sent for retraining, of course. That helped deflect some of the criticism. But the therapists’ report indicated that his psychological defects had resisted the standard treatments. He was little more malleable now than he had ever been, still obsessive and dangerously unpredictable. They wanted her to return him for more extensive treatment, but so far she had not complied. Complete retraining could alter an officer’s personality and sense of self; but there was also a substantial risk that he would be so far damaged as to be useless, all military skills lost along with his previous identity, leaving him as undeveloped as a newborn child. With the chimæra of Blake to dangle in front of him, she could control Travis while she needed to. Once he had killed Blake for her, it became imperative to dispose of him; and the sooner the better on both counts. Varro’s knowledge would be additional twigs thrown onto a smouldering blaze; the evidence Travis could give against her was enough to kindle a separate inferno in its own right. And there were still members of the High Council who were trying to pin down responsibility for the Orac affair onto the Supreme Commander....

“Begging your pardon, ma’am —”

It was almost shouted in her ear. She looked round sharply. Her companion had edged his way along their shared bench until his ponderous bulk practically nudged her own body, and there was a spark of awareness in his eyes that she had previously observed only when he was absorbed in the painstaking correlations of his Intelligence work. Somehow she seemed to have aroused a greater reaction in him by her silence than by anything she had told him.

All her suspicions came boiling back up. How could she have been lulled into forgetting what he was: Intelligence Commander, information gatherer — in other words, a spy? How had he managed to dupe her even for a second into considering him a safe recipient for her confidences? His inarticulacy, his faintly ludicrous exterior and the formidable memory they concealed, worked together to create a frighteningly effective interrogation technique that had subverted all her defences. For a moment she could do nothing but stare at him in mingled fear and rage.

Venn tried again, this time actually going so far as to nudge her respectfully, apparently oblivious to the fact that the Supreme Commander recoiled from his touch as if from an unshielded flare: “So what was this great secret then, ma’am?”

Servalan found that her mouth was ajar. She shut it, briefly shaken. Surely, after what she had told him, he could not expect her to answer that, when Death waited already to silence those who knew....

Concealed by the heavy jacket, one hand slipped into her pocket. She played the tiny scanner there over the man beside her, frowning slightly as the high-pitched beep reported him to be free of all bugs, recording and transmitting devices. Evidently he was expected to make his report verbatim on his return to the city. A memory such as his no doubt functioned as a more discreet recording device than any his masters could have provided.

The frown left her face, to be replaced by an exquisite smile. Let him have his information, then. Let him believe he had fooled her. After all, he would never know just how close he had really come to making a fool of her in sober fact; to being entrusted with a measure of affection and allowed to live.

“It was no very great secret,” she told him, her tone deliberately off-hand. “A minor peccadillo — a purely personal matter. You see, in my year-group at the Federation Space Academy, we cadets used to amuse ourselves in the nearby Delta areas after lights-out, when officially we were confined to barracks. It was strictly against regulations, of course, but the instructors turned a blind eye, even on the occasions when things went a little too far. That Delta settlement was illegal anyway — they were obstructing the maintenance levels — and they bred like flies. The planet could always spare a few Deltas when there were millions more to replace them, and the Academy probably saw our expeditions as extracurricular practice in essential urban warfare skills. I seem to remember that we imagined ourselves at the time somehow to be demonstrating our independence from the arbitrary rules imposed on us by our elders.” She poised her head elegantly to one side, watching him. “The young have always shown such a touching capacity for self-deception.”

Most of us outgrow the taste for rebellion. Only for Blake and his deviant kind does it become a drug whose effects persist into adulthood, an addiction to be justified by invoking ideals of Truth or Freedom with ever-increasing desperation....

“One night we ran into a rival group. There was an argument. Someone had a demolition charge, and things got out of hand. The blast took out the whole zone, as far as the next intersection. There was no time to look back — we got out of there as fast as we could, each for himself, and I assumed the others were all safely back in barracks; it wasn’t until the next morning that we discovered that three cadets who’d been in my group were missing in the explosion.”

She shrugged it aside. “The Academy covered it up, of course. There were hardly any remaining Deltas in a position to protest, but the dead cadets’ parents could have made life quite unpleasant for the staff if they had taken it up with Space Command. The deaths were written off as a training accident, and the curfew was rather more than purely nominal for some time afterwards; in any case, with the Deltas no longer available, our midnight expeditions had rather lost their savour. There was no need for the affair ever to be mentioned again.”

In fact, as high-spirited pranks went, it had been relatively minor. It was not as if the three who had died had been in any way under her responsibility. They had been attempting to curry favour, to prove themselves in order to gain the entrée into the favoured circle that surrounded each of the most glamorous and sought-after cadets. The fact that they had happened to attach themselves to Servalan was almost irrelevant.

Her great eyes glittered with anger at remembered injustice. “A certain self-righteous instructor who happened to oversee my classes saw fit to cite that incident in her end-of-year report. In fact, she maintained that it was proof positive, if any were needed, of the other claims she tried to make: that I was undisciplined, opportunistic, irresponsible and totally unsuited both to the Academy and to my chosen career in Space Command.” The Academy had already extracted the cost of the necessary repairs to the ductwork in the maintenance levels from Servalan’s family — what more had they expected from her? Payments to the Civil Administration in lieu of the lost labour of each of the dead Delta-grades?

“On the basis of this one report from a politically unsound individual, it was apparently concluded that I was unsuitable officer material. My place on the second-year course was no longer assured; my whole future was suddenly uncertain. My family put pressure on the instructor to retract her allegations, then on the Academy to discredit her. They even offered a substantial endowment to the Academy on my behalf. Everything was ignored. The Academy had decided to make one of its periodic displays of impartiality for public consumption at my expense. Eventually I resolved to approach the Principal in person.”

Her experience to that date had taught her both that middle-aged men could be wound around one’s little finger — given certain physical assets, all of which she possessed in abundance — and that logic tended to get jettisoned out of the airlock the moment Servalan came in by the hatch. Hindsight showed her all too clearly just how coy and immature her approach must have seemed. Varro had been infinitely more sophisticated than the various elderly family members and would-be-avuncular acquaintances who had melted like putty under her wiles. He had allowed her to believe him dazzled into agreement with her proposal; but she had long since been forced to confront the galling knowledge that he had seen through her from the very beginning.

“The meeting was satisfactory. I thought I had persuaded him to do what I wanted.” The prospect of the arrangement in question had not been wholly distasteful to her, either; the Principal had been undeniably attractive, despite the fact that he was well over forty and thus at least half-way to the grave....

“I was mistaken.” Cold rage marred the flawless curves of Servalan’s face. “When I came to his apartment as we had agreed, he had three friends with him; a Senator, a senior Investigator, and a controller from a powerful clan well known to be bitter rivals of my own Family. He told me in the presence of all of them that before he would even consider allowing me to continue my training as a potential officer, he meant to teach me a lesson on pride and the enjoyment of authority he was sure I would never forget. He told me that he had no intention of compelling me by force to do anything against my will, that the choice to co-operate or to leave would be mine throughout; but if I left before the evening was over, he would personally use his influence in Space Command to ensure that I never gained my commission. And then he and his friends systematically... humiliated... me for their own satisfaction. I did everything they asked. I performed services for two or three of them at once. I even begged them for more, at his command. They treated me, a high Alpha, as if I had been a bond-slave, and made me tell them I enjoyed it.”

At eighteen, she had believed herself to be experienced, until that evening. She had even looked forward to demonstrating for Varro one or two somewhat unusual accomplishments of her own. But the limits of her worldly knowledge had been rudely demonstrated to her. She had not been hurt; in fact a few months later she had even begun to put some of the things she had learned to good use on her own account. But at the time she had been sickened and degraded and befouled in her own eyes, just as they had intended for her. She had been abased for their pleasure, and when they had finally allowed her to go, she had turned back deliberately at the door, to show them that they had not broken her, and scanned their faces, all four, in minute detail, promising herself never to forget any of them: never, never, never!

She had remembered her hatred indeed; but it was many long years since she had permitted herself to remember its cause. To her fury, she found herself trembling slightly. She had long since gained the command they had tried to deny her, gained command at the highest level — save one, and that was almost within her grasp. The Senator who was now President would yield her both his place and his life at the first sign of weakness, the other two had died already for her pleasure, and the ex-Principal of the Academy would not live to see this night out. It was Servalan who held the whip now.

She gazed at Venn with contempt, and found herself wishing unexpectedly for Travis. He was insubordinate, uncommunicative, and morose; but his mind was blade-keen where it mattered, and he knew the limits of his place whether he chose to keep them or not. He would have known better than to press her for that information and doom himself in the process. But Travis was away in the Second Sector, chasing rumours of Blake, and the best that Insecution could provide her with was _this_ object — this Venn....

“Varro and I never spoke again,” she said coldly. “He was the Principal — I was one of thousands of cadets. We had nothing to do with each other. As for the instructor who had reported me in the first place, she lost her position half-way through my second year after citing the Federation legal system in a lecture as an example of a computer setup where false data could generate false results. The Committee for the Promotion of Correct Thought were very interested in that lecture; apparently it qualified as treason....”

Servalan had made quite certain that the woman knew exactly which cadet it was who had reported the content of the lecture in question to the authorities, and she had been there, watching, enjoying the scene, when the police came to take their suspect away. It had been inevitable that her persecutor would put a foot wrong eventually. Political views like hers had no place in the Academy. Her lectures had been orbiting close to the event horizon for a long time. It had merely been a matter of picking one’s moment, and then providing a not-so-anonymous tip-off.

“Unfortunately Varro was not such a fool. He never put a foot wrong politically. I have waited a long time for this, hunted him over the years from planet to planet — but when he leads that raiding party down today to capture the Soteros, he will have made his final mistake.” There was pure pleasure in her smile. “We will meet again — for the last time.”

“But Wright — Varro, that is — doesn’t go out with the raiding parties any more, ma’am!” Despite the cold, the Intelligence Commander was sweating visibly. “He’ll just send a few of the young men to knock out the transport crawler and run for it. There won’t be any meetings or talk or time for killing because Wright doesn’t work that way —”

“Oh, this one time, I think he will make an exception.” The smile was secret... knowing. Servalan’s eyes were veiled again in contemplation of the enjoyment to come. “You see, I have taken great pains to arrange for the presence of a certain person whom I believe he has waited many years to meet.”


	22. Advance Party

“Hey, Istan —” The young officer caught at her arm as she tried to brush past, swinging her round and effectively blocking the passage. Crowded back against the wall, Cally stiffened instinctively; but the voice was familiar, and so were the sleepy hazel eyes under a somewhat rumpled halo of brown hair.... After a moment she smiled back cautiously at Lanuv. A certain sweet pungency on the girl’s breath and the high colour along her cheekbones suggested that the bruising exuberance of her greeting was at least partly chemical in origin. Uncertain quite what to expect, Cally freed herself from Lanuv’s grasp, cradling the shoulder that had made somewhat abrupt contact with the seamed wall-plating, and glanced past her, along the corridor. There was no-one else in sight.

The young pilot caught the glance, but didn’t seem offended. Her smile broadened into a lazy grin that crinkled up the corners of her eyes. “Istan, have you heard the latest?”

Cally guessed. “That we are about to reach the planet?”

“Old news.” Lanuv glanced round quickly in the other direction, the way Cally had come, then caught hold of her arm again and began backing down the passage towards the door to the mess-room, almost dragging Cally in her wake by the sheer force of the energy that seemed to be burning through her, from the springy tousled hair to the tips of her toes. She was almost dancing on the balls of her feet. Whatever it was that was currently racing through her system, she was flying high and well away....

“Latest news is that we’re not making a landing. There’s a shuttle in orbit already, just waiting to dock with us. They’re moving the Soteros stuff down to the shuttle bay at this very moment. Someone’s in a real hurry this time!”

They reached the mess-room and she pulled Cally inside. With the ship so close to making orbit, the crew were mostly fully-occupied, a fact which Lanuv had obviously been counting on. There was only one other person in there, a plump freckle-faced boy with red apprentice tabs at the collar of his flightsuit who looked up in mute alarm as the two women came tumbling in. Lanuv scowled at him.

“Rhye, out!” she ordered, and when he hurriedly obeyed, she flicked the lock shut the moment the door closed after him. Catching up the remaining portion of the half-unwrapped food bar he’d abandoned, she sniffed at it, made a face and tossed the remnants, wrapper and all, into the recycler chute at her back without even bothering to look round. Finally she turned to an increasingly bemused Cally and propelled her down into one of the sagging orange chairs, coiling herself into another and leaning towards her eagerly, both elbows propped on the padded arm of her seat.

“Listen, the _Gergovia_ herself is going to be making a carefully-arranged landing at the main spaceport tomorrow or the next day, as soon as they get everything fixed up, planetside — formal banquets, viscast coverage, convention panels for Dr Andorf and the scientific staff to address, and so on. But the plan is to send the actual cargo down with a small advance party as soon as we arrive, in an hour or so’s time; it won’t be glamorous, there won’t be much spare space in the shuttle, and none of the senior crew want to miss out on the celebrations — so the long and short of it is that as junior officer, I get to command the advance party.”

She grinned. “Or so old Chu says, and I wasn’t about to argue. After all, you never know, this might be the start of great things... anyhow, I got volunteered. So did Amery — he’s supposed to provide the token scientific presence to look after the Soteros cases on the way down and during the overland trip to the hospital. Then there’s room for two more, and as commanding officer, I’m allowed to pick anyone I like —” one eyebrow went up — “as long as they’re junior to myself and don’t have any vital function to play in landing the ship, of course, which I have to admit cuts the possibilities down a bit.”

The other eyebrow shot up to join the first, and she gave Cally a quizzical look. “Come on, Istan, you must know what I’m getting at. You fit the bill perfectly — and you’d have a golden opportunity to try and get a message out to your own ship while we were down on the planet. No senior officers, just think!”

She sat back, hugging her knees, and tilted her head on one side, apparently puzzled by Cally’s lack of response. “I’ll be glad to have you, you know that; and you were the first person Amery suggested —”

Hour after hour with Amery, trapped together in closer quarters even than this ship — “No!” Cally’s voice held a note almost of panic, and Lanuv stared at her, suddenly shrewd beneath the hectic flush.

“Look here, whatever’s wrong between you and your young man, it can’t be that bad....”

“Amery is not ‘my young man’,” Cally protested almost helplessly in the face of the girl’s obvious scepticism. “Truly, Lanuv, he is not.” She found herself on her feet without quite understanding how it had happened. Her face was burning. “I have to get away — I have to get off this ship —”

The worst of it was that Amery genuinely, honestly could not see how unbearable the situation between them was becoming for her. He was scrupulous almost to a fault in his efforts to adhere to the letter of his self-inflicted promises, and to make no claim on her, never to seek out contact for its own sake, never — even by implication — to attempt a mind-link on any level more intimate than the purely verbal.... And yet his mind brushed across hers forty times a day as if for reassurance of her mere presence. He caught at every excuse to communicate with her, and to prolong each exchange, in a sort of clinging desperation that seemed impervious to all hints short of active cruelty on her part; he’d made himself blatant enough for even a casual acquaintance and non-telepath like Lanuv to read him — Cally guessed wryly that she was probably ‘Amery’s alien’ to the whole ship’s company by now — and at times she gained the impression that he sought almost to parade his unhappiness before her. In search of what, she could only guess: pity — anger — any response at all, perhaps, if only he could gain something from her that would be his alone....

She did pity him. She _liked_ him; she would have liked him even if he had been a human. They shared far more than just the planet of their birth. She had wanted to find a way to work with him towards their common aims, not just because she was lonely (or because he was), not just because she needed help to pass unnoticed in the Federation (although with every new day on the _Gergovia_ she was learning just how little the two years spent in struggle against the Terran Federation had taught her of normal existence far from the inevitable brutalities of the front line), but quite simply because she would have valued his friendship. But friendship was all she could find to give him... and it was not enough, it was only making both of them miserable; compassion and even tolerance had their limits, and the young man’s constant attentions were beginning to feel like persecution.

Lanuv’s eyes were bright with curiosity but, blessedly, she was asking no questions. She cocked her head to the other side, looking up at Cally from the depths of her chair. “If you really want to get off this ship, you know, all you’d have to do would be to slip away once we got to the city. We’re only going to be delivery-boys, no-one will pay any attention to us once the stuff’s safely arrived — they’ll all be too busy waiting for the scientific bigwigs to come down and deign to tell them how it’s done. We could probably get a message out to Blackport for you, and find you somewhere to hide until you get an answer one way or the other. There’s a thriving rebel group on Insecution — I expect you could join up with them if you wanted to lie low for a bit. Rebels aren’t too picky as a rule — they’ll shelter anyone who’s on the run from Federation law, so long as they’re ready to join in as needed with the general shooting and running around and blowing things up —”

“No.” Cally shook her head. “No....” She hardly knew what it was she was rejecting — Lanuv’s acceptance and cheerful dismissal of rebel activity, or the prospect of her own return to such a world.... It was all an adventure to Lanuv, that was plain enough to see. Death and lawbreaking; hiding and bombing and killing alike, none of it was any more real to her than the simulated heroics of some illicit vid. She would organise an escape for ‘Istan’ in the same spirit of casual generosity in which she might acquire a contraband Eralthi heart-spine knife as an exotic souvenir for a friend — and with as little thought to the ultimate cost.

She caught the young officer’s sparkling eyes in her own steady, shadowed gaze, holding them until eagerness gave place to puzzlement and finally threatened to shade into irritation, trying to search beneath the feverish drug-induced exhilaration and then again beneath the lazy, mocking mask that underlay it, trying to gauge the real Lanuv. But the mind-senses she still instinctively relied upon slid uselessly off the human, as always. Even a perfect mental shield held a certain flavour of the personality within; but Lanuv had no natural shields, only the vaguely-disturbing _absence_ of a non-telepath. Cally released her from her gaze, sighing. Intuition told her to accept the girl’s offer of help anyway. Humans were often reluctant to trust intuition; the Auronar knew better.

She cast an apologetic glance on Lanuv’s direction, and sank back down into her own uncomfortable seat — despite the all-too-apparent hard edges where the orange padding had worn thin it contrived to yield beneath her with a disconcerting lack of support, as unsuited for its rôle as she was beginning to fear herself to be.

“I am sorry, Lanuv — you were quite right, and I was being foolish.... Of course I will go with you down to the planet. And I would be very grateful if you could help me find some safe place to stay until the _Gergovia_ is due to leave, though I doubt that Medda will take the trouble to make any very great search on my account....” A somewhat rueful smile; she had nothing but respect for the senior tech’s competence, abilities and grim fairmindedness, but she was aware that Medda’s opinion of her elusive junior was currently veering between puzzlement and exasperation. That had been no part of Cally’s intention — though perhaps in the circumstances it was just as well. Still, she regretted it.

Lanuv’s face lit up with pleasure, and she was embarking on a description of what was obviously going to be some complicated scheme to ensure Cally’s future on Insecution — Cally caught her eye, frowned slightly; shook her head. “All I need is a safe place,” she said gently as the girl faltered. “No rebels, no secret off-planet messages, no elaborate undercover identity.”

She fought to keep her voice steady. “Oh Lanuv, I just need to get away, to have time to decide what I should do. I no longer know what I truly want — what I can believe in —”

“Believing’s overrated.” There was a bitter, brittle edge to Lanuv’s casual tone that shocked Cally out of her own worries. “It was believing drove my mother mad. Just her and me alone in the apartment, waiting for someone who never came. I used to believe too, when I was little. Then, when I started to wonder, I wasn’t old enough to know not to talk about it. So they found out, and when I was nine they put me in a school, and they came and took her away.”

“They took away your mother?” Cally stared at her, frantically calculating what she knew of human development. At nine years old, a child was still pre-adult, totally dependent — and humans had no communal nurseries. The parents cared for their singly-born children in isolation, one or two at a time.

On Auron, the earliest and strongest telepathic link and the true bond of relationship was with one’s clone-siblings. Cally knew her own gene-line, had met her parents often enough, been fascinated to observe traits in them she had clearly inherited, and genuinely mourned when they died before she was fully adult. But it was her sisters with whom she had shared every moment of her childhood, and it was from their mutual telepathic bond that they had sought comfort from injustice or pain, support and approval in their childish trials and triumphs, new ideas when they were bored — and above all, a sense of belonging. The sibling-bond reflected in miniature the union that was the Mind of Auron, as a famous poet had once put it, and though it had inevitably, naturally, weakened as adulthood and independence approached, as she had become aware — proud, even — of being different, even now in her self-exile far away she still believed that she would know if one of her sisters needed her, and would lose a part of herself if one of them died.

If that was the kind of bond young humans had with their parents — She tried to imagine herself at an equivalent age, separated suddenly and without explanation from her last remaining sibling. “They took away your _mother_? That was barbarous!”

“She was mad. Mad. Crazy, insane, out of her mind. Shut up in two rooms with a small child. Of course they took her away.” Lanuv stared back; hostile, defensive, alien. “I was taken to see her, once every year until she died. I didn’t want to but they made me. She used to keep whispering at me, trying to tell me secrets, trying to drag me back into her world like it was when I was little. That’s where _believing_ gets you, Istan. My mother believed in someone who wasn’t there, but just about to come. And then she started to talk to him, and they took her away. However much you want to, you can’t make something true when it’s not just by believing in it —”

That struck to the heart of Cally’s own fears. It hurt — more than Lanuv could possibly have known or intended, logic told her, a bare second after she had already snapped out: “And where was your father in all this?”

She caught a momentary glimpse of something ugly at the back of Lanuv’s eyes; but the girl flashed a tight grin in her direction, genuine humour with an edge of faintly scornful surprise, and drawled back “Why, who did you think it was my mother was waiting for?”

Before Cally was certain she had fully absorbed the implications of that, Lanuv had scrambled up from the clinging embrace of her chair and was extending a hand downwards to help the other woman do the same. Instinctively returning the grasp, Cally found herself being tugged to her feet and patted — disconcertingly — on the shoulder. “Just don’t take things to heart so, all right? Don’t tear yourself up trying to work out what you actually, truly want or what you ought to be doing — and whatever you do, don’t fool yourself that belief or loyalty can change reality. When you come up hard against facts, you can either bend or break — or else just slip by on the other side. Take life as it comes, Istan. Don’t try to force it round to fit the way you’d like things to be.”

A final, valedictory, pat on the shoulder. The young officer stepped back to survey her at arm’s-length, her head slightly to one side. Her eyes were clear of all but a shadow of friendly concern. “Still sure you want to hide yourself away on this comet-spawn of a winter planet? Not even a message?”

“Not... not yet.” If she delayed much longer, there would be no chance of finding the _Liberator_ at all. She shut away that knowledge. It was probably already too late.

Cally schooled her features into a mask of calm interest and faced Lanuv squarely. “If I am to form part of this advance party... what must I do?”

Lanuv looked a little puzzled for a moment, then grinned. “Oh, just turn up at the shuttle bay when you’re called. You don’t have to worry about special duties and all that — I may not be the world’s best pilot, but I reckon I can manage a standard shuttle undocking and re-entry single-handed. If you ask me, if it weren’t for regulations this whole trip could be done single-handed — but we’ve got to have a nominal scientific presence, there’s a minimum size for a shore party, and so on.... According to regulations, you’re my backup; but not even Commander Chu seriously expects me to drop dead halfway across the Barrier Mountains —” she made a wry face — “though frankly I doubt he’d weep salt tears on my account — so basically I’ve just been told to recruit a couple of extra bodies to fill out the party, and the less vital the better.”

She moved across the room to release the lock on the door, glancing back as a thought seemed to strike her. “I think I’ll have Rhye as the fourth. You know, that young sprig who was hanging around in here when we came in. I know for certain he’s got no real duties now until after the ship lands, and if he’s actually down there with us when we pull off your disappearing trick, it’ll look as if he’s in it too. Help put a stop to any ideas he might get after the event of saying he saw us conspiring together beforehand.”

Cally stared at her, the full realisation of what Lanuv might be risking belatedly dawning on her. “How can you rely on that?” she said sharply. “He would be just as likely to accuse you in order to try to clear himself... and in any case, as the officer in command they will hold you accountable for my desertion, Lanuv. I will be safe on the planet, and the blame will fall on you —”

“Relax,” the pilot told her lazily, coming back to the centre of the room to lay a casual hand on her arm. “Think about it. You’re an unpaid, unofficial tech, working your way for your board and passage — they’d have a job pinning a charge of desertion on you even if they tried. And anyhow, what’s the worst they can do to me? Demote me off the ship back to where I came? Believe me, I never asked to be transferred here in the first place — the Commander certainly never requested to have me, I’ve heard him on the subject often enough — some computer-serving clerk just pulled my name off one section of microtape and stuck it onto another without a by-your-leave to dump me onto this old tub. Take away my commission and break me out of the Service? They won’t go that far; and I can’t say I’d be that devastated if they did. Officer training at the Federation Space Academy wasn’t exactly my own choice of career — I was lucky even to get in, and lucky to scrape a pass mark at the end of it.”

She ran a hand absent-mindedly through her hair and gave Cally a cheerful grimace. “I’ll be all right — worse luck! If you’d picked a more attractive planet I might even have been tempted to join you....” She yawned and started towards the door again. “Oh well, I’ll be off this ship sooner or later, one way or another, I suppose, if I don’t die of boredom first. What about Amery? Are you going to tell him or shall I?”

Cally stiffened instinctively. “Tell him what?” Too late, she detected the hint of mischief in the casually-flung question, and flushed.

“Tell him you’re planning to walk out on him, of course,” Lanuv said, straight-faced. She turned as the door opened, and raised an eyebrow. “Or are things bad enough between you that he wouldn’t worry if you disappeared?”

“I told you, it is not like that between us....” But Cally had flinched, and her voice carried little conviction. For Amery at least, it _was_ ‘like that’; and if she were to slip away in silence as she longed to do, he would be both distressed and afraid for her. She owed him the truth, but the telling of it would come as no favour to either of them.

“I will explain to him myself, before I go,” she said quietly, and met Lanuv’s amused, sceptical look with her own level gaze.

The young officer shrugged. “If that’s how you want it.... Well, I’m off to find Rhye and tell him he’s been volunteered like the rest of us, and then I have to report back to the Commander, so he can notify the spaceport whom to expect. I’ll meet you in the shuttle bay in an hour or two, when we dock.”

She vanished through the door, leaving Cally alone and strangely forlorn in the middle of the mess-room; but a moment later Lanuv was back. “Planetary Met forecasts two inches of snow at Yakostonok. You’ll need something warmer than that uniform — I don’t suppose they issued you with surface kit, did they? No, I thought not.... I’ll see what I can find for you.” And then she was gone again, leaving behind the impression of a whirl of energy, a friendly grin and a sketchy, mocking farewell salute.


	23. Revelations

The snow outside was two days old, grey and hard-packed now beneath trampling feet, but overhead the sky was bruised and darkening. Layer upon layer of cloud was drifting sluggishly lower from the north, veiling the horizon and lying heavy over the shoulders of the surrounding mountains — heavy and swollen with snowfall, and the pending promise of more snow. It was barely noon, but despite the snow-glare the daylight was dull with the overcast pallor of approaching storm. Miriam knew the mountains in all their moods, from the savage whirling whiteness of the blizzard season to the incongruous crystalline beauty of the blue-sky weather, when the highlands flushed green for a brief season under the swift-growing cinquefoil leaves of star-flowered bradwort, and even above the snowline the blossom-like spore-bodies of the mycozoid ice-spinners sprang up overnight on the surface of the drift, scarlet teardrops nodding on their long translucent stems, until they spilt open in tiny soundless explosions to broadcast their precious cargo across the slopes. But she had never liked this dim, brooding weather that set the nerves on edge with waiting for the first flakes to fall.

She let the unneeded snow-goggles fall to hang on their lanyard around her neck. The crude wooden blinkers with their single slit for each eye swung heavily as she moved, bumping against the wrappings at her throat, but she ignored the accustomed discomfort. She was searching the milling group gathered outside with narrowed eyes, seeking the figure of their leader.

She was not the only one unsettled by the brooding clouds. Two or three of the dozen men and women waiting opposite — pitiful remnant of the body of trained fighters who had been active before the plague — were glancing up nervously at the sky, and the whole group seemed subdued, huddled together as they were in the lee of the cluster of snow-slab huts across the valley. Wright had probably instructed them to assemble under cover inside the buildings until they were ready to move off; but after months of usage the dark, cramped interior space, unappealing at the best of times, had become stale-smelling and furred with some kind of colourless growth that seemed to thrive on humans’ body-heat and the waste gasses of their breath....

The rounded snow-slab shelters, natural-seeming to overhead surveillance patrol flights, were the only form of above-ground constructions the rebels permitted themselves, and even then only when there was no natural cave-chamber near the current main exit that could serve — although this was more because the snow-huts were universally unpopular than for any security considerations. Freshly-built, they were tolerable; but they were neither intended nor suited for long-term occupation. It was time, and past time, that they moved to a fresh base, for that and for a myriad of other reasons, not least of which was their total dependence on secrecy for survival. She knew it as well as Wright or any of the Council did. But the plague made it impossible; and if this last expedition, this final chance at a miracle, failed, the plague would ultimately also make it unnecessary.

Wright was not there. A momentary hope rose in her that he had seen reason and changed his mind again, coupled with fear that something had gone wrong already — plague, accident, strain, betrayal.... She slipped out into the open from the cleft that concealed the entrance, ignoring the bite of wind-chill through her hastily-donned outer clothing. The hard-packed snow underfoot, trampled down and then refrozen, was icy and uneven. It was too long since she had been outside, and she was no longer as agile as she had once been. She stumbled, flailed a moment for balance, and came down hard on one knee on the rutted surface.

Ridiculous tears of pain and frustration sprang to her eyes and Miriam bent her head to hide them, crouching helpless on the hard snow like some ragged-furred _malochishka_ earth-bound with a broken wing. She cursed herself and Wright, the Federation, the government and the rebels all alike under her breath with a dull fury and words she had not used since the day she walked out of the assembly-plant. Day after day, her strength had been spent in the support of others, in providing a rock of reassurance against which their fears could break and ebb. With the cold biting into her gloved fingers and fading agony throbbing through her knee, she allowed herself the luxury of a few moments’ weakness.

Half-seen forms were hurrying towards her. “Miriam! Are you all right?” That was black-bearded young Larin, genuine concern in his voice. She raised her head and found his hand outstretched to help her up. Smiling at him to soften the refusal, she began to struggle to her feet unaided, noting ruefully how he edged back with evident, grateful relief. The others had not even ventured so close. She had taken all possible precautions before she ventured out of the hospital, but she knew well enough that those still apparently healthy regarded the medics and their helpers with an almost superstitious fear, as if their constant contact with the plague victims rendered the very air they breathed infectious. Despite everything she could do, it might even be the truth. Larin’s gesture had been a brave one, and she appreciated it, but she had no wish to put him or any of the others more at risk than they were already.

She glanced around the circle of faces. “Where’s Mion? Is he not going with you after all?”

“Oh, it’s all right, he’ll be out in a minute.” Larin again, with cheerful insensitivity. “He just went back in to check something....”

Miriam did not wait to hear the rest. Better for both of them if she could speak to Wright in private. She began to pick her way back across the snow to the entrance with more urgency than grace.

* * *

“Mion, why? Why go yourself? That was never part of the plan when we talked about this, and you know it. Don’t try to tell me they can’t manage down there in the pass without you; how many raids have we pulled off in the last year? — twenty is it? — and all but two a success, even though we were going against hardened targets or right into the Federation compound itself. You planned every one of those raids. Your tactics got the men in, and got them out again even when things went wrong. It’s your name the government curse; it’s you we credit with every success, and rightly so — but you didn’t insist in taking part in any one of those raids in person. What makes you suddenly so sure they can’t handle a simple hold-up against off-worlders on a snow-bound road this afternoon unless you’re actually on the spot with a gun in your hand?”

It had taken Miriam longer than she expected to locate him. She’d more or less assumed that they would run into each other somewhere near the main entrance; but whatever it was he’d gone back into the base to check, either it had been a lot more complicated than he had expected or else he’d got sidetracked into dealing with some other matter. He’d only just been starting back towards the outside when she’d finally found him — and she would give a good deal to know just what was written on the printout he’d been studying when they’d first caught sight of each other. It hadn’t been so much the expression on his face as the oh-so-casual way he’d folded up the flimsy sheets and thrust them into his jacket when he realised she was there....

“Mion, listen to me!” She caught hold of his arm as he tried to push past her. “You’re a planner, a strategist, not a foot-slogger. Down in the mêlée the most brilliant general becomes just one more body to throw into the scales against the enemy advance — take him out of the battle, give him an overview, and every decision he makes is worth a thousand men. You taught me that, remember? You don’t risk the king in chess to take a pawn.

“We need your skills and your knowledge, Endymion Wright, just as we always have done. We don’t need one extra gun in a firefight. If anything goes wrong, we need you here to pick things up and carry on. What’s the point of getting yourself gloriously killed in some stupid ambush, Mion? What use is that going to be to the ones left behind?”

“Don’t dramatise yourself.” He freed himself forcibly from her grasp, caught her chin between thumb and fingers, and jerked her face up to his as if she had been a child. He’d never handled her roughly before; never used that cold tone with a whiplash hint of a sneer.... It was a Federation voice: higher-grade addressing lower.

“Every man and woman waiting for me out there is leaving behind lovers or dependants, most of them sick and helpless. Why should you be uniquely privileged to keep yours at home? And if you’d learned anything about chess from all I’ve tried to teach you, you’d know that in the endgame the king goes onto the attack... and this is the endgame for us, as well you know. I’m throwing in every piece I have left, every fighter fit to make the journey — because this isn’t ‘some stupid ambush’, this is our last chance. If this goes wrong, there won’t be anything left worth picking up, or any way for us to carry on.”

“So maybe I haven’t had your education.” Miriam’s eyes were blazing. “Maybe I am just a jumped-up runaway factory-drudge at that. But I was born with enough native wit to know when someone’s trying to pull the wool over my eyes — and when he’s using harsh words to turn me off the scent. Most likely all you say is true enough; but then so was it true yesterday. So was it true the night before that. Why wait until now, today, to change your mind and take this fancy to go yourself when it never was in the plan? Why sneak around so shiftily inside your own base, and stow away your papers in a hurry for fear I might see them?

“I’ll grant you I wasn’t totally honest over why I don’t want you to go. Well, I’ll give you the truth; and maybe you won’t care over-much to hear it, but I’ll give it to you for all that. When I’m done, you can tell me the truth of what you’re planning, and then we’ll be straight with each other at least.” She set her jaw and stared up at him, searching the familiar worn lines of his face for traces of that cold-voiced stranger, the ghost of the man he must once have been....

“You’ve got no more business to be going along on that raid than I have,” she told him defiantly. “Think about it, Mion. I’m still healthy, and there’s few enough left that are. I was in the last party that held up a convoy in the pass, five years ago, and the one before that — which is more than you can say for any of those who are out there waiting for you. So why am I not on the list to go — and why is it right that I’m not?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you’re not going — we haven’t been able to spare you out on a raid since that sot Lenka died —”

“That’s right.” Miriam pulled away from his loosened hold, folding her arms. “That’s got it in one. I’m more use here than I am out there — and I’m almost a year out of practice. I half-crippled myself on the ice just now when I was looking for you — I couldn’t even keep my feet just trying to cross the valley. How much of an asset do you think I’d be on the slopes down to the pass? And what goes for me goes for you. When was the last time you went out on anything more strenuous than a gentle supply run? Was it nine months after you first came here, or a year maybe?”

She faced him squarely. “You and I, we’re old, Mion, old and stiff and out of condition. You can’t just throw yourself back into action and hope to take up where you left off. You claim to want every fighter down there that’s fit — well, if that’s true then you can just leave yourself out, because you’re not a fighter any more, and you’re not fit. That’s the medic speaking, not Miriam, and you can take my word on it. Set off with the others right now and you’ll be the weak link — the one they have to nurse along. Is that what you want? Is that what you really want? Any one of those youngsters can dive for cover faster, last out longer, shoot quicker, climb steeper slopes than you can. What are you expecting that no plan of yours can help them to cope with, that matters enough for you to risk your own life and everything that hangs on it? What’s new since last night?”

Wright had been listening to her with surprising meekness — what she had told him was no more than the truth, but it was not pleasant hearing for any man’s pride — but a curiously detached air. It was almost as if he were trying to assess her in some way; anticipate her reaction.... Now wiry eyebrows rose, and he gave her back a straight answer to her question, the last answer she would ever have expected from him: “A girl.”

“A _girl_?” The coil of her hair was loose on her neck, the heavy braids starting to slip free from their confinement. Automatically, her fingers worked to tighten them as her mind baulked in numb disbelief at what she had just heard. And now, of all times — Mion, are you out of your mind? Tell me this is all some kind of sick joke....

As if in answer, one corner of his mouth twisted into a thin smile and he glanced aside for a moment before meeting her eyes again. “A girl? Human, female, twenty-two years of age... you are right of course. I beg her pardon. A young woman.” A fractional pause. The smile twisted. “My daughter.”

“You’ve got no —” Miriam cut the unthinking response short, flushing. Jealousy drove a sudden, almost physical pain under her ribs; not for the unknown woman of more than twenty years ago, not even for the children she herself would never bear, but for the time they had lost — the years of his life she had never known and could never share.

“As a matter of fact... officially, no, I have no daughter. None registered under Federation law.” Briefly he looked weary, vulnerable — more recognisable as the man she had thought she knew — and her own face softened; but already the mask of cynical amusement had returned. “You see, there was a girl — oh, not that girl, a different girl. Many girls, in fact; but this one happened to be working for me personally. I really can’t recall how she was employed now — something in the office, I fancy — in any case, she was a lazy and a careless worker. A low Beta, but not too bright. She would dream up elaborate fantasies to cover the results of a moment’s inattention, and both apparently believe in them and expect others to do so. There were complaints. My own work was disrupted. The situation was quite impossible. For some reason —” he shrugged — “I fail to remember why — I chose to take a hand in the affair myself. I believe I found the girl — Arta — intriguing. Somewhere inside that poor dreary little commonplace clerk was a spark of crazy wild talent she had no idea how to cope with; some fatal fluke of originality in her mass-produced mind.

“She was useless in the administration grades, of course. As an alternative to dismissal, I took the opportunity to offer her a rather less intellectually demanding position in my... private life, shall we say; a rôle requiring only the exercise of her more decorative qualities — she was attractive in her way, with that vague sweet unformed youthful charm that inevitably fades into drabness — and a certain basic aptitude which she proved to possess in abundance. For a while I was quite taken with her — I even deluded myself into believing that I had somehow discovered something distinctly out of the ordinary. I was her deity: there was a refreshing novelty to the situation.

“Unfortunately nothing could make Arta more than what she was — an immature, unstable and obsessive fantasist, educated parrot-fashion beyond her limited abilities. Worship by callow youth loses its savour faster than one might think... and she was becoming irrational and possessive. Eventually I was left with really no choice but to disentangle myself —”

“Stop it!” The words came out on a half-sob, and Miriam drew a shuddering inward breath, her throat locked almost rigid in the attempt to control her voice. “So you blackmailed the girl into your bed, and then got tired of her. Isn’t that enough, without having to make a sneering mockery out of every detail, without boasting about it — and to me?” His familiar features were almost caricatured by shadow in the dim tunnel-light: shrewd, narrowed hazel eyes set beneath fierce-springing protective brows, proud nostrils carved out of a long straight nose, echoed by jutting cheekbones high above the close grey weave of wiry beard; a face of strong-marked planes and bitter lines, etched deep around the eyes, and down between the scar-stretched cheeks and the mouth folded close about its own secrets. It was a face worn down to the stark essentials, a survivor’s face with a savage beauty in every scornful mark — the face of an arrogant stranger, a man she did not know.

“Mion, what’s come over you? Why are you doing this to us? What’s happened to change you so?” Her voice betrayed her intended challenge into a cracked plea at the last, and she turned aside abruptly, eyes blurring in humiliation, to bury her face against the rough stone of the passageway.

“Nothing’s changed.” There was a queer note in Wright’s voice as if he had only just realised who she was. “Miriam —” She felt his touch brush the nape of her neck, sliding upwards to cradle the heavy weight of tight-drawn braids, and turned with a great upwelling of relief to let the familiar hands gather her gently against his shoulder, into the hollow of his arm. She glanced up, seeking confirmation in his eyes; but his face was troubled.

“‘Mion’ never really existed, Miriam,” he said softly in response. “We created him between us, you and I, out of the breathing corpse of a fugitive from the Federation, a man named Varro. ‘Mion’ was only ever a part of me; and if he was the best part, then it must have been your influence that made him so....” His free hand came up to touch her cheek, and she caught it between both of hers, pressing it there without speaking.

“Nothing’s changed —” There was a hint of bitterness in that. “Right from the start, you see, I was never quite what you wanted to believe me. I’m no persecuted innocent — just a man with a dangerous enemy — and I never truly ceased to be Andra Varro. I merely... allowed myself to forget. I built a new life to mask the outlines of my old existence with as much conscious care as if I had been staging a diversionary attack on a vulnerable outpost; ‘Endymion Wright’ was a shell that allowed me to survive here among you on Insecution, a cover identity that had to run deeper than just a change of name. Somehow, somewhere along the line, the mask began to take on a life of its own... but it was only ever a mask, Miriam. It was real enough as far as it went —” his hand tightened in her grasp — “but it never went all the way. Nothing’s changed; I grew careless, that was all, careless enough to be surprised into remembering who I really was and not whom I was supposed to have become — into remembering Arta.”

“What happened to Arta?” Miriam’s voice was small but steady, distant-seeming even to her own ears. It was Mion who held her now, she told herself, no matter what he might try to claim, Mion’s familiar voice and touch, Mion who would never hurt her, and not that cold sardonic stranger.

“She left.” A shrug. “She wiped herself out of my life; took all her possessions, left my quarters, left the Academy grounds, and disappeared. One more grand dramatic gesture, I suppose, but it suited me well enough and I let her go. I never saw her again. I never really thought of her again after the first week or so, in all the years down to the day I learned that she was dead — leaving a seventeen-year-old daughter I’d never even known about, let alone seen.

“She must have known she was dying when she recorded that vistape. It was found among her possessions, already sealed and addressed, and sent on to me with a note to that effect; and that was the first I knew of any of it — her death, the girl, and all the rest. The tape was confused and almost delirious in places, but one part was very clear: Arta insisted the girl was my daughter.

“I didn’t know what to think.” The cynical ghost of a smile twisted one corner of his mouth. “If I’d ever considered children at all, it was only to assume that they’d happen at some point — and eventually to accept that there probably weren’t going to be any after all. I wasn’t prepared for the idea of acquiring one retrospectively, as it were — quite apart from the fact that Arta might have been lying, or at least mistaken. All the same, I traced the child to a school institute, on the lower levels of the city where her mother had finally died, and managed to get access to her identity profile — for a price, of course.”

This time the smile held more bitterness and less humour. “The genetic data confirmed Arta’s claim; I had a daughter — born a low Beta and educated as such, and showing every sign of having inherited most of her mother’s traits. An heir to be proud of indeed, a final mocking gift for the Principal of the Academy — and yet.... Mine. My blood and bone, my responsibility — my chance at the future.

“I used my position to do what I could for her without acknowledging the relationship. I tried to get her the training she’d need for a better career than the ones she was born to, and to make sure she never went short of anything I could buy: food, clothing, equipment. We were strangers, Miriam —” as her disbelief finally threatened to ripen into protest. “Affection from me would have been a meaningless charade, even if I could have been certain of finding any to give. The right moment to introduce myself never seemed to come...and I had troubles of my own.

“Two old acquaintances were put to death on trumped-up charges that year. The officer responsible was vicious and unscrupulous, and I had reason to believe I would be next on her list. Officially, she was not yet of sufficiently high rank to move against me openly; but given her record, that only made it all the more certain she would try to strike at me by any other means she could. She would have taken great pleasure in destroying my daughter if she’d even guessed that she existed. All I could do was watch and wait, and try to protect both of us by keeping my distance....

“I underestimated Servalan — neither the first nor the last to do so, I imagine, though that was little enough consolation. I doubt if the President has even now realised just what kind of potential monster he was fool enough to take by the tail when he first tried to buy her off with promises of power.

“She made her move long before I expected it, armed with the President’s own authority and a warrant for my execution on grounds carefully left unspecified, and I barely got warning of her intentions in time to escape. I managed to salvage my life, the clothes on my back, and a few thousand credits, but precious little else. Any chance of getting to know my own daughter went by the board along with the wreck of my Federation career; twenty-odd years at the helm of the Space Academy, all sacrificed to the momentary appeasement of the pique of one ruthlessly ambitious commander.” There was nothing of humour left at all now in the bitter lines of his face.

“After all, I’d committed the Federation’s cardinal sin, the error that brings down more men than incompetence or any official displeasure — I’d long since started to take my position for granted. The way of the world’s the same across the length and breadth of the Seven Sectors: the old and complacent give place to the young and ambitious, who grow complacent in their turn.... I was a ruthless young commander once; too successful too young maybe — but Servalan has already risen further and faster than ever I did, and the Academy was a political backwater compared to the streams she aims to sail. Soon enough the tide of affairs will turn and leave her stranded at the pinnacle of her career, with nothing left ahead but twenty or thirty years of guarding her back against challenge from below, and no way to go but down. Much joy may she have of it then.”

There was an icy deliberation in his final words, and Miriam shivered despite herself, pulling free from his arm and backing against the tunnel wall. “And what became of this daughter of yours while you were so busy sacrificing your career?” she demanded sharply.

“As soon as I was safely established on a neutral planet I arranged to get news of her through trusted contacts at the Academy.” Wright’s tone was cold. “I still had a little influence left with colleagues there who’d respected me, and I used it on her behalf. I’d have done better to leave well alone — both for my own sake and for hers.

“Nothing short of my head on a platter would satisfy Servalan. I’d counted myself safe, but she was still hunting for me, and somehow she got wind of my dealings with the Academy and traced them back to the planet where I’d taken refuge. Only blind luck enabled me to get away a second time; and any further attempt at contact with my daughter was out of the question for the immediate future at least. The chances were that I’d already betrayed her identity to a woman who’d proved as blindly implacable as she was unscrupulous....

“I spent almost a standard year trying to cover my trail once and for all, working my way from planet to planet, before I ended up on Insecution. In all that time the first real news I’ve had of the girl — beyond the bare fact that she’s still alive — came this morning.” He slipped the folded sheets of printout free from inside his jacket and held them out to Miriam. “Her name. On the day’s transcript of spaceport communications.”

Miriam accepted the pages offered to her, unfolding them slowly; but she barely glanced down. Her eyes were on Wright’s face, a hundred painful questions in them.

“How can you be sure?” she said instead at last. “It’s a far cry from the Space Academy to Insecution, Mion. What makes you think this is her, just from a name?”

“I can’t be certain, of course.” A half-shrug; his eyes were steady. “But I’d take a chance on it. She was registered under the same name as her mother — and it’s not a common name.”

“Arta?” Miriam frowned. “Surely —”

“Arta.” One corner of Wright’s mouth crooked inwards. “Arta ke Lanuv.”

* * *

The final stage of the undocking of the Yakostonok shuttle from the _Gergovia_ took place in almost total silence, broken only by curt monosyllables from the pilot and a quiet undercurrent of electronic sound as the computer responded to his hands on the instruments. The atmosphere on the bridge was never particularly relaxed when the Commander chose to oversee operations in person, as he did far too often for the comfort of his junior officers, but after a couple of wholly innocuous remarks had earned their perpetrators a glare apiece of utter fury from Chu, even the normal murmur of muted observation and acknowledgement had rapidly died down into a wary tension you could have cut with a knife. Something had riled the Old Man, and he was set to take it out on anyone and everyone careless enough to attract his attention. Those unfortunate enough not to have pressing business elsewhere that would take them off the bridge were keeping their heads well down.

Chu himself was perhaps the only person present who was oblivious to the constrained atmosphere around him, though he would have taken a grim satisfaction in it if it had been drawn to his attention. He had planted himself squarely behind the pilot’s seat, head and jaw thrust forward, hands clenched by his sides, and was directing a blind glower at the nape of Bultis’ close-clipped neck in a manner calculated to scorch that gentleman’s ears for him and arouse considerable speculation as to the prospects for his future career.

But the Commander was blind not only to his pilot’s discomfort but almost to his very presence. The fact that the seat in front of him was occupied had barely even registered, save as an indication that all on the bridge was as it should be, and his fierce stare was aimed straight ahead without thought or discrimination. In his mind’s eye he was seeing not the back of Bultis’ well-groomed brown head but the exquisite smile worn by the face of the Supreme Commander in the message that had dictated exactly what measures he was to take, and why, and just what he might expect to lie in store for him if he should find himself afflicted by last-minute scruples....

Scruples! Chu’s teeth clenched, and a blood-vessel at his temple throbbed painfully. That had been an insult in itself, placing him implicitly on a level with civilian commanders — the suggestion that a Fleet, even ex-Fleet, officer might allow himself to be swayed by personal preferences when it was a question of obeying a direct order. Worst of all was the knowledge that the Supreme Commander had gauged him all too accurately, that he would indeed have been inclined to evade compliance with her orders if given the opportunity, Fleet discipline or no Fleet discipline.

In his day at least it had been no part of any commander’s duties to send out members of his crew, however junior, however new to the ship, however lax in their professional conduct, to certain death as unwitting bait in a ground-based trap. Back on the _Volta_ , if he’d announced a suicide mission, the sacrifice of four crewmen for the sake of the ship, he would have expected — demanded — almost the entire crew to volunteer to take part. If ordered to do so, he would have led such a mission himself without qualms. What he would _not_ have done was to order men to their deaths, without reason and without warning, at the pleasure of the Supreme Commander or of any other superior officer. He had known captains who had done so, to curry favour or to rid themselves of trouble-makers they were too weak to handle, and he had despised them. Now, thanks to a moment’s careless dealing with that pathetic excuse for a Spaceport Director, Vaturian, he himself had become one of their number.

Just how was he supposed to have known that this one voyage of all voyages was vitally important for some pet project of the Supreme Commander’s? If she had been counting on speed or reliability then she should never have sent out the battered old _Gergovia_ ; and if she had been expecting blind, unthinking obedience then she should have picked out some eager and thrusting young Fleet captain, not sour, old-fashioned Chu. It had been a commander’s perquisite since the first days of the Federation to negotiate in person for the victualling and outfitting of his vessel, and to pocket whatever profits he could obtain. Vaturian’s scheme had been no different in scope, and Chu had not scrupled to take full advantage of it. But there was no denying that, technically speaking, he’d deviated from his orders and accepted money in return. If the Supreme Commander chose, she could take the bare facts and use her authority to push through a treason charge that would stick — and she had made it crystal clear that she had every intention of doing so if he failed to act exactly as her message had instructed.

Gritting his teeth, Chu had obeyed. He had tossed Amery and Lanuv loose into the storm without a hope of rescue, giving out the orders with never a hint that there was no intention of their mission’s ever reaching its ostensible goal. By making Lanuv nominal commander he’d ensured that whatever crew she picked would have to be even more junior — and hence dispensable — than herself, and had also avoided the necessity of personally selecting two more members of his ship’s company for sacrifice. The Supreme Commander had specified that four should go down, but had only supplied two names....

Lanuv had picked one of the apprentices and the alien woman, the latter a choice he certainly hadn’t expected, and one he had almost for a moment been tempted to veto. He was hardly going to throw away a telepath worth her weight in gold just to fill out the numbers to Servalan’s satisfaction. But according to Amery at least, the value was in a matched pair, not a single specimen; and if Dr Andorf had advised that the young man be disposed of, as apparently he had, then it might be as well not to have the other telepath left hanging around afterwards, making trouble by wanting to know what had become of her compatriot. Besides, Chu had maintained from the start that any decision to risk keeping a potential political agitator on board the _Gergovia_ would depend entirely upon her receiving a favourable report from Medda at the next port of call — and the senior communications tech’s pungently expressed opinion had boiled down to “More trouble than she’s worth — sir.” He’d already been in more than half a mind to report her presence to Security as he’d promised, and whatever fate she might suffer during the rebel ambush was likely to be swift in comparison to the questioning that awaited her at the hands of the Interrogation Division. In fact, Chu had reflected, nodding a curt approval to Lanuv’s choice of companions, if you looked at it the right way you could say he was doing Istan a favour.

He bared his teeth in grim acknowledgement of the joke, and Bultis, glancing back over his shoulder at that moment, flinched before the savagery he glimpsed in the Commander’s face. Chu turned on him. “Perhaps you’d care to explain just what you find so striking, Mr Bultis?”

The pilot knew better even than to attempt an answer to that. His face dropped into schooled woodenness. “Undocking complete. Visual now available on shuttle, sir.”

At a growl and a gesture from the Commander he switched the image over to the main screen, and sagged in ill-concealed relief as the fierce stare that had been transfixing him for the last ten minutes finally swung away. Whatever was biting old Chu, it looked for the first time as if he at least might stand a chance of getting away unscathed....

Chu watched the shuttle swing clear below the bluff bows of the _Gergovia_ and prepare to re-enter the atmosphere on its long journey back to the spaceport from which it had been dispatched. The two journey-crewmen who had brought it up were still waiting to be assigned the accommodation they would require for the night somewhere on board the ship before being returned to their home port at the earliest possible moment when the ship set down at Verno tomorrow morning. Chu’s scowl darkened yet further at the thought. He had half a mind to clap the pair of them in the brig until the _Gergovia_ was due to leave and then conscript them into his crew as replacements for his junior pilot and the engineering apprentice he was about to lose. In his opinion, that was the very least he was owed by Insecution after this little fiasco.

He trained his fixed stare on the rapidly-dwindling dot of the spaceport shuttle until it vanished into the white swirl of the skies below, holding himself rigid in fury as if in parody of the formal attention stance he would have used at a funeral ceremony. On a level too obscure for conscious acknowledgement, he was paying his last respects to the young officer he’d just betrayed. Lanuv had been lazy, sloppy in the performance of her duties and unbecomingly pert; but to be shot down by rebels as helpless bait in an ambush or executed after the event by Insecution troops as an unwanted witness to the Supreme Commander’s scheming was no fit ending for her. Unfortunately, the matter had been presented to him as a choice between the life of Arta ke Lanuv or the life of Welong Chu: which, of course, was no choice at all, as Servalan was very well aware. Chu had absolutely no intention of risking court-martial for the sake of a young woman he’d never cared for above half, let alone for the sake of a principle.

“Enough gawking!” he snapped, swinging back to distribute the force of his glare impartially around the bridge. “Mr Bultis, I’ll trouble you to dim that screen if you can’t keep your attention on your instruments, where it belongs. I want to see some action from all of you, not goggling eyes all over the place!”

After all, when it came to the pinch, principles — and fairness — had never really played much part in the philosophy of an officer’s service to the Federation.


	24. A Cold Wind Blowing

As an observation point and a potential site for intercepting the course of an ambush, the sloping snowfield overlooking the narrowest part of the pass was everything Blake had promised. There was less than an inch of snow on the ground, despite the recent heavy fall and the continuing spatter of flakes, and they had an easy route down to the floor of the steep cleft along which the wide track — Avon had no intention of dignifying it with the name of ‘road’ — from the mining community at Yakostonok ran south-westward towards the major settlements of the marginally more temperate zone at the equator. Assuming, of course, that the rebels would choose to stage their attack in this particular pass in the first place.

The route from the spaceport had already traversed what Avon estimated as some eighty tortuous miles before it reached this point, for most of which distance it was occupied in negotiating the great northwest–southeast range of peaks known, with a staggering lack of originality of which the early colonists had doubtless been unaware, as the Barrier Mountains. There were probably dozens of equally likely ambush sites along the way. The probabilities, however, favoured this one.

About five standard years earlier — six point two planetary orbits — there had been a series of rebel attacks on vehicles conveying supplies destined for the Federation compound within the capital city, an enclosed zone which housed the local administrative outpost and the headquarters of such Federation interests as had managed to gain a foothold on Insecution, as well as whatever diplomatic representation and personnel the Federation currently saw fit to maintain. According to normal custom, the entire enclave was deemed Federation territory, subject to Federation law and policed by its own black-clad security force; and, inevitably, the rebels had seized upon it as the principal symbol of what they claimed to be Federation encroachment upon their planet.

Since the beginning they had been mounting futile and largely nominal attempts to render the compound untenable for its inhabitants. The raids on the supply convoys had been a case in point. The only long-term effect had been to divert all incoming Federation shipments to the larger, closer and better-guarded port at Verno, which had always handled the major share of such traffic, further impoverishing the tenuous settlement beyond the mountains and diminishing the store of goodwill which might otherwise have been assumed to exist between the rebels and the independent-minded citizens of Yakostonok township. Like many outlying populations, the north-easterners tended to nurse a perpetual grudge against a central government where their elected representatives were outnumbered and their complaints ignored, and one would have supposed that the rebels would take more care to placate those who ought to have been their natural allies. But then, in Avon’s experience, such practical considerations rarely played a part in determining policies all too frequently driven by blind ideology.

In any case, the earlier attacks had all taken place within half a mile of the narrowest point of the pass above which they were now positioned. Whether this was because the rebel group maintained a major base near here or whether there was some alternative factor which made this location particularly suitable for their purposes, Blake had argued — with reason, Avon conceded — that in what must by now be fairly desperate circumstances they would be likely to resort to a tried and tested ambush site rather than intercepting the Soteros convoy at some other point _en route_. And, while Avon had no particular desire to court death by intervening during the course of an armed robbery and attempting to persuade the victors to abandon their prize, there was no denying that the ambush itself provided the only predictable moment at which the rebels could be relied upon to break cover. Attempting to locate a group whose chief claim to fame was the length of time for which they had so far evaded detection was not his idea of a fruitful pastime, and he had very little faith that a general broadcast of Blake’s name and presence would bring the rebels out eager for alliance, as Gan seemed to believe. One attribute this particular group appeared to possess in abundance was a commendable sense of self-preservation; the only likely result of such a course of action would be to bring the Federation down on the _Liberator_ in force. Thanks to Jenna’s piloting, they had good reason to believe both the local government and the Federation to be unaware of the ship’s presence in orbit, and Avon had every desire to keep matters that way.

Since he had his own reasons to be as much in favour of intercepting the drug shipment before the rebels could attempt to use it as Blake was — probably more so — he had agreed, with a complaisance that had apparently taken the rest of the crew somewhat aback, to a typically Blake-style plan that involved four of them teleporting down to the surface and making an appearance as soon as the ambush was completed, convincing the rebels of their identity and benevolent intentions while explaining the treacherous nature of what they had just captured. Vila, predictably, had almost had a fit at the very idea. Blake, equally predictably, had promptly relegated him to teleport duty.

The latter was an arrangement with which Avon concurred entirely. Vila had become particularly annoying of late, since they had left Blackport. He had persisted in attempting to discuss whether Cally had deliberately left them and whether she might be on board the _Gergovia_ , considerations which held very little interest for Avon either way but evidently obsessed Vila and apparently rendered him impervious to Avon’s most uncompromising set-downs. Blake, who could have quelled the little Delta if he chose, had merely observed that he would appreciate answers on the matters in question himself and recommended drily that Avon change watches with Gan if he wanted to avoid Vila’s society. Avon had arranged to do so, with some annoyance. As a result the last thing he currently wanted to do was to spend an hour or so out here in the cold with Vila while they waited for the Soteros expedition to turn up.

In fact, Avon reflected savagely, if he had been asked, back on Earth, to choose a selection of individuals with whom he would wish to share the confines of a spaceship — even one the size of the _Liberator_ — for the foreseeable future, the ship’s current crew would probably have been the very last he would have picked. Vila, a babbling idiot, and light-fingered to boot. Gan, with never an original thought in his head. Blake, an obstinate ideologue not content with getting himself killed, but insisting on dragging the rest of them along into the bargain. Jenna, self-willed and sharp-tongued, fooling herself into thinking that Blake would ever give her what she wanted from him....

Ironically enough, self-contained, competent Cally, who made no demands on him, was the only one whose company he might have chosen of his own accord — assuming he’d ever been able to break her of her naïve desire to rush to the aid of the oppressed and her exasperating preference for trusting her instincts before logical reasoning, that was. In any case, for whatever reason, Cally was gone; Avon was able to accept that even if the others could not. Individuals came and went in your life, and it was ridiculous to attach any great importance to more than a very small number of them. Avon had long since learned to guard himself against doing so. Whether they actually found Cally or whether they had already left her far behind was a matter of complete indifference, Avon told himself, provided that Blake could be prodded thereby into the course of action that he, Avon, needed him to take.

That course of action had so far brought them to a snow-covered mountainside on Insecution, and a long cold wait. Avon adjusted the temperature regulator on his thermal suit upwards yet again, surreptitiously. He knew perfectly well that the momentary sensation of relief was purely psychological: his core body temperature was already uncomfortably high, and the suit’s heating elements could do nothing against the biting wind-chill that numbed his face and contrived to insinuate its way through impossibly tiny crevices in the clumsy finger-joints of the gloves, and every other vulnerable seam, until his limbs ached with insidious phantom cold. Blake had picked the perfect look-out point — perfect, that was, from up in orbit. What none of them, even Avon, had managed to anticipate was the wind.

Funnelled down down between the peaks from the north, it was the wind that had swept clear the exposed shoulder on which they stood while elsewhere the drifts were piled eight or even ten feet deep with a week’s worth of snow. The very ground at their feet told the tale; a frozen white coating scraped thin across rough rock, where every ridge of dark stone scoured free bore a tapering slick of wind-driven crystals in its lee. There were no outcrops large enough to obscure their view along the valley — nor to provide shelter. Every gust veiled the ground in a brief icy flurry, and transformed the flakes still steadily drifting down from the low, discoloured clouds a few hundred feet above into vicious needles of pain on unprotected flesh.

Resisting the instinctive urge to turn away from the wind, Avon shielded his face with one hand and cupped the other around the distance viewer, scanning the visible length of the track for any sign of approaching vehicles. Despite the fact that it was still several hours before sunset, local time, the overcast sky was dark enough to cut in the visual enhancement circuits; but the viewer’s electronics had not been designed to factor in the optical interference of falling snow, and the image in the eyepiece emerged in shadowy, pixellated white, like a spacecast transmission dissipated by a dense ion cloud.

Avon abandoned the viewer and peered upwind through narrowed eyes, frowning. For a moment he thought he caught sight of a crawling black speck at the limits of vision over to the right; but a renewed squall sent stinging ends of hair whipping across his eyes, and by the time he had blinked free the involuntary moisture the distant movement had ceased — if, indeed, it had ever been there.

He tightened the fastenings at his throat, pulling the insu-lined hood of the suit more closely about his face, and caught sight of Jenna, huddled together with Blake, doing the same a few paces away. With her other hand she was fighting a losing battle with her hair, trying to thrust back flying brassy tendrils into her hood with awkward gestures of her glove as yet more strands escaped from their confinement. She looked as if she were wishing she had emulated Cally in cropping her hair to a manageable length.

Glancing up, she caught Avon watching her and scowled, favouring him with two succinct syllables — instantly snatched away by the wind — that only served to broaden Avon’s smile. Blake laid a placatory hand on her arm, and she turned back, with a parting glare, to their desultory conversation with Gan. Since this appeared to consist of long periods of elbow-hugging silence punctuated by impatient looks up the valley, Avon conceived a distinct suspicion that its main purpose was to provide an excuse for Blake and Jenna to shelter downwind of Gan’s bulk. Gan, meanwhile, was no doubt so lost in the delusion that their high-minded leader was actually consulting his opinion, that the true state of affairs had not even crossed his mind. Ironic appreciation touched Avon’s lips; but not for long.

He brought the teleport bracelet clasped over his sleeve up close to his mouth, fumbling with gloved fingers to open a communicator channel. “ _Liberator_!” No response. It would be just like Vila to have wandered off the flight deck in search of refreshment — or even to have fallen asleep. “Come in, _Liberator_!” Avon repeated sharply.

“All right, all right. Is that you, Avon? I might have guessed....” The other man sounded aggrieved, but since Vila made a speciality of this, Avon was easily able to ignore it.

“Vila, there is still no sign of the Soteros convoy. It was due past here ten minutes ago by my calculations — it should at least be in sight by now. I want you to use the short-range ground sensors to locate it and check that it’s still on route and still moving. In this wilderness a column of powered vehicles ought to stand out like a new tunic in a crowd of Deltas. Calibrate for engine emissions and a minimum mass of —”

“Got it,” Vila interrupted with a distinctly smug air. “Just coming up to the crest of the pass. Ought to be coming into view any minute now, and down to your position in a few more minutes. Incidentally, did you know it’s not actually a convoy at all? There’s just one vehicle — Zen says it’s a hover-crawler, one of those all-terrain things they used to sell off to the colonies twenty years ago. Doesn’t seem to be any air cover or any kind of escort, either. Anyone would think they _wanted_ the stuff to get captured —”

“Of course Servalan wants the stuff captured,” Blake‘s voice broke in. “That’s why she’s here in the first place — that’s why we’re here. Thank you, Vila, we’ll get ready to move out. Avon —”

At this point he obviously decided that holding a conversation on communicator link via the ship with a man standing only a dozen feet away from him was more than a little ridiculous. Avon, himself swinging round to face the others, saw him abruptly let his bracelet fall and heard the connection cut out. Blake reached him in a few strides. “Avon, while I appreciate your evident concern for the welfare of —”

Avon had recoiled a half-step without thinking, stiffening into automatic hostility. With the prospect of an end to his part in this senseless crusade so close, he was in no mood to accommodate Blake’s desire to reassert his authority.

“Am I to understand that Servalan is present on Insecution and personally concerned in this affair?” he demanded without ceremony, and, as Blake blinked, pressed his advantage home: “And that you have known about it for some time without seeing fit to inform the rest of us?”

“It was a guess — confirmed by Orac,” Blake retorted, recovering his poise. A gust of snow blew between them, and both men had to take an involuntary step back to maintain their footing. “The deduction was neither particularly difficult nor significant. If it had occurred to me that you had any interest in the matter I would have assumed that you had already come to the same conclusion yourself.”

Avon stared at him. “After the outcome of the Orac affair, Servalan ought still be trying to explain herself in front of a special hearing of the High Council — not apparently free to pursue her own intricate goals on a planet ignored by the Federation for the last twenty years. Or did that aspect not occur to you either? The presence of the Supreme Commander vastly increases the probability that this is a trap aimed directly at us, Blake — and at the very least if you really believed that the knowledge would be a matter of indifference to the rest of us, I doubt you would have taken such pains to suppress it until it was too late for our opposition to make any difference!”

Blake was watching him with a curious half-smile that made Avon reconsider all his arguments abruptly. “Too late? Hardly... you’re a free agent, Avon. Call Vila again and have him go to the teleport bay and bring you back up; have him teleport all of us and set a course back for Blackport and the larote tables. If I know Vila, it wouldn’t be hard to talk him into it. Leave this place and its wretched people — and above all leave the Soteros and its invisible, treacherous cargo. I give you my word not to lift a finger to stop you.... No? I thought not — so save your breath, Avon, and get moving!”

He held Avon’s gaze with his own an instant longer, his expression uncomfortably shrewd, before heading back up the shallow slope to relay Vila’s news to Gan and Jenna. Avon stared after him, only long habit masking the turmoil of calculation behind his eyes. Blake had as good a mind as his own, on the rare occasions he actually chose to use it: just how much could he possibly know? How much did he guess? And what would he decide to do, when it came down to it? Which way would those cursed unpredictable so-called ideals of his prompt him to jump? He followed Blake across the snow, face set and watchful in the shadow of his hood.

At that precise moment there was the echo of a distant high-pitched crack of sound followed almost instantly by a profoundly deep thunder that gathered in volume until it was more vibration than sound. For a split second, before he was conscious of thinking about it at all, Avon felt a chill of ancient fear across the back of his neck; as the four of them instinctively looked at each other before turning in unison to gaze up the valley, where the shreds of a cloud of grey-white snow were just settling, he glimpsed the same atavistic response in the faces of his companions.

“What in all the worlds was that?” Gan’s voice was not entirely steady, and he gave a rather shamefaced grin.

“The snow must have slipped down the side of the mountain — an avalanche, they call it.” Blake frowned. “The whole floor of the valley will be blocked — the crawler will never get through —”

“Of course!” Jenna’s eyes sparkled suddenly. “Blake, don’t you see — that was the ambush! Block off the only route ahead — attack from behind while the crawler’s crew are still stunned by their near escape — it’s textbook tactics. Toss a couple of toxic grenades down the top hatch before anyone knows what’s going on, and you’ve captured your armoured vehicle, contents intact, without losing a single man. Didn’t you hear that genitam charge going off just before the snow started to move? I begin to like your rebels already.”

“And if you are right,” Avon said softly, “we are currently a quarter of a mile too far down the pass, on the wrong side of a loose mass of dangerously unstable snow. If we are to have any chance at all of making contact with Blake’s rebels before they disappear back into the mountains we need to move, and move fast. Wait — the teleport — if we can estimate the site of that explosion —”

“Won’t work.” Blake shook his head. “Too dangerous. We had enough trouble finding a clear space to teleport down in the first place, remember? Ground level is anything up to ten feet below the surface of the drifts over most of these mountains — teleport in a hurry, and we could end up floundering in snow to the armpits, or even suffocated.”

Jenna stared at him for a moment, then, after a glance at the sky, nodded. “All right then, we go on foot; but we’ll have to move fast if you hope to find so much as tracks in the snow by the time we get there. In forty minutes or less, this will be blowing half a blizzard and you won’t be able to see more than a stone’s throw in front of your face.”

Startled, Avon examined the sky in his turn. The clouds were admittedly an un-Earth-like and rather unpleasant colour, but to his unpractised eye at least they were no more threatening than they had been when the four of them had first teleported down, since which time they had produced no more than a reluctant sprinkling of flakes.

The scepticism on his face must have been visible to Jenna, for she gave a short laugh. “Take my word for it, there’s a bad blow coming. Don’t they teach you anything about weather, inside your Domes on Earth?”

“They teach us how to control it,” Avon snapped back. “Provided we’re never forced to travel to a planet so primitive that it doesn’t have a single weather satellite!”

Blake had also glanced up, although to Avon’s certain knowledge the sickly-looking clouds could have conveyed no more significance to him than they had to Avon himself, and now he caught Jenna’s eye. “We’ll follow your lead then, Jenna. Gan, you go second. Help her if she hits a deep drift. We’ll be right behind you.”

Without a backward glance he set off in their wake, leaving Avon perforce to follow. Avon noticed with dislike in passing that Blake’s dark hair was barely ruffled by the gusting wind, springing cleanly away from his face while Avon’s own clung and whipped about his temples. Somehow, it seemed a typically unfair advantage.


	25. Before the Storm

The hover-crawler had finally ground its noisy way out through the spaceport gates more than two hours ago, after what had seemed at one point to be a potentially endless maze of petty bureaucracy had been negotiated. Their decontamination records were not in order — would they undergo a second check, please? Federation currency was not legal tender on the surface of Insecution, and private individuals were not permitted to carry it; any credits currently in their possession must be deposited in the care of the registrar’s office and the appropriate receipts filled in, or else exchanged at the official rate of 6·1% for Insecution kapeieks. Lanuv did not hold a flight clearance for Insecution airspace. No, Federation Space Academy training was not a recognised qualification here. They would have to take a ground vehicle and submit a revised journey schedule. Yes, the Central Hospital would also have to be notified. And would Officer ke Lanuv please bear in mind that running lights were to be carried at all times after dark?

Only the cool logic of the Novozim she’d applied on the shuttle down had enabled Lanuv to keep her temper when faced with the prospect of a full day’s driving instead of a relatively quick flip in a cargo flyer. They knew, and she knew, that she was a perfectly adequate atmospheric pilot; she would hardly hold her present rank if she were not. It was an entirely typical piece of planet-bound parochial obstructionism, delivered with a barely-concealed smirk. They hadn’t even bothered to check that she was in fact qualified to drive the crawler — simply shuffled the four of them off with their cargo on a floating pallet, just as it had been unloaded from the shuttle, in the direction of the hangars, where she had been offered a choice consisting of the single remaining serviceable vehicle. All the rest had been subject either to breakdown, or to extensive cannibalism in the attempt to maintain the core of a usable fleet.

The crawler was a massive semi-articulated machine that combined a pair of tracked drive units with a rudimentary anti-grav system mounted on the underside of the cabin, serving chiefly to reduce the axle loading so that the vehicle could operate across wide variations in terrain. It carried the maroon livery of the spaceport, faded and brown-streaked now with age, under which the traces of its old Federation markings had begun to re-emerge as smoother, darker paint-shadows. Like almost all the equipment on this metal-poor planet, it was second-hand and imported technology, military in origin, to judge by the redundant bulk of heavy plating, but long since outmoded, de-classified and sold off for duties where its rugged construction and low maintenance requirements outweighed its limited internal capacity and disproportionate fuel consumption. At some point, probably after arrival on Insecution, the available cabin space had been further reduced by the decision to fit a layer of insulation on the inside of the hull. It was surprisingly effective. Despite external temperatures below freezing, Lanuv was driving without gloves and with the collar of her jacket left undone.

The various heavy vehicles she had been taught to handle at the Academy had been similar in style but considerably more sophisticated. It had been a barely adequate preparation. Fortunately, once clear of the spaceport and embarked on the long trail up though the mountains there was little enough they could collide with; and thanks to the crawler’s ponderous bulk, the few minor incidents with large boulders or narrow gorges had left it with no more than a few fresh scrapes to the paintwork down its long-suffering flanks.

Lanuv handled it confidently enough now, one hand on the regulator of each of the twin units and her feet braced lightly on the rudder bar, counteracting the tendency of the trailing section to swing. There were still some hours to go before dark, she reckoned; time enough to investigate the running lights and the various other switches she had yet to work out.... She’d be wanting a rest herself before then. The pilot’s seat was rigid and far from comfortable — she was numb from the constant vibration, while her spine, pressed against the metal weave of the backrest, was becoming all too sensitive and her wrists ached in the unsupported void between regulator and arm-rest.

She glanced at the auto-nav screen. Positioning data showed them to be just short of the crest of the pass, almost at the end of the long uphill run. With the heavy tail-unit surging from behind, the descent would pose a whole new set of handling problems before they were clear of the mountains and into the sparsely-grown uplands beyond. Besides — she flicked a thumb over the socket of one of the external monitor-eyes to pan it upwards — the current snow-shower seemed to be settling into something more permanent. Pulling off the track for an hour or so’s layover and a leg-stretch — so far as that was possible within the confines of the cabin; she didn’t fancy the idea of a stroll outside — ought to give it time to snow itself out for the moment before she had to tackle the new challenge of the downhill route. They were just passing what looked like a reasonably sheltered overhang, where she could pull up for a while without having to boost the anti-gravs to break out of the drift when she wanted to get started again....

Lanuv swung left and let both regulators drift closed; first the rear unit followed by the main drive when they were far enough under. On the internal cabin monitor she could see her passengers, equally numbed by monotony and vibration — not to speak of the boredom Lanuv herself had staved off with the Novozim edge — stirring in a flurry of agitation and curiosity. “Just stopping for a while,” she called back from the cockpit into the ringing silence left by the cessation of the engines, and activated the sole communications channel provided on the crawler, the direct link back to the control tower on Yakostonok field. The sudden release of tension prompted a gigantic yawn.

“Crawler Three calling Control. Over.”

There was a considerable pause. “Come in, Crawler Three. What do you want? Over.” Control sounded distinctly snappish. Lanuv suppressed a chuckle, picturing the woman tearing herself away from a fascinating conversation with her counterpart down at Registry or Freight Lading in order to resume her duties — there wouldn’t be much traffic at Yakostonok in this weather and she’d probably been counting on several hours’ leisure.

“Pilot Officer ke Lanuv requesting permission to pull over for an hour’s rest-break, Control. Please confirm. Over.”

She switched the contact automatically, waiting for Control’s acknowledgement and log-off. Instead, her eyes widened in indignation at the unexpected reply.

“Permission refused, Crawler Three. It is imperative you adhere to broadcast travel-schedule. I repeat, permission refused. Continue your journey at once. Please confirm. Over.”

Why, you petty-minded slime-crawling daughter of a shift-merchant — “Listen, Control, this isn’t funny. You people have given us nothing but trouble since we landed. There is no way I’m going to be able to drive from here to the Central Hospital without a break — several breaks — unless you want me dropping asleep at the throttle. If Central are that worried about my precise arrival, you can forward them an amended travel-schedule. Over.”

“Our understanding is that you carry a qualified co-pilot, Crawler Three. You are expected to alternate duties as standard. Kindly continue your journey immediately. Over and out.”

She’d picked Istan in the co-pilot slot on the strict understanding that the rôle would be purely nominal — as it would have been, if they’d only been allowed to take one of the flyers, as she’d expected.... Lanuv slammed a fist down on the arm-rest, winced, and went aft in search of Istan.

“I don’t suppose you can drive one of these things, can you?”

Istan had been curled up on a hard seat by one of the little view-ports, staring out into the snow. She looked up. “Is something wrong, Lanuv?”

“Those bedevilled gem-smashers back in Yakostonok don’t want us to stop, that’s all — and I could do with a rest. Why they reckon you’re qualified to drive a crawler, when they didn’t even bother to find out if I was, beats me; but I though it was just about worth asking....”

The other woman gazed up and down the long, narrow cabin as if she might find the answers there; but after a moment she shook her head. “Amery says he has no experience — and while I can drive a six-wheeler or bring a spacecraft into orbit, I have never handled a vehicle like this. Are the controls very different?”

Lanuv cast her eyes upwards and made a resigned face. “I’ll say they are. It’s not so much handling the regulators as the articulation — and then unless you’re used to steering with your feet, it can get a bit hairy. Thanks, Istan, but I can keep going for a long while yet —” she tapped her pocket, where her pill-case held another three blue gel patches, twins to the one on her upper arm that must be about exhausted by now — “and if I really need to, later on, I’ll just take a nap anyhow and let Control go hang. After all, they can’t do much about it from the other side of the mountains.”

She stretched, fingertips pressed hard against the low roof of the cabin, and stifled another yawn. She didn’t actually feel sleepy. It must be the stale air having this effect on her. She reached up to crack open the ventilation system a touch wider, and glanced back at Amery, sitting stiffly beside his precious stack of bio-transit cases as if to guard them with his very life.

“How’s the baby, Amery?” she called with a grin, indicating the cargo. Istan flashed her a quick glance of reproof, but she shrugged it off — a little teasing never hurt anybody — and sauntered back to the cockpit to start the engines again. The short rest had done her good, anyhow.

Amery smiled dutifully as Cally came to the end of her swift explanation; but in truth he could see nothing particularly comical in referring to a carefully-balanced pile of anti-virus samples as a ‘baby’. Like so many of Lanuv’s supposed jokes, it was not funny as he understood humour — merely... strange. He was rarely so conscious of humans’ basic _alien-ness_ as he was in Lanuv’s company. Their minds seemed to work in completely different ways, and he was never quite certain how much genuine malice might lie behind the mockery. But Cally, who understood far more of humans than he did, liked her; and for Cally’s sake he too was prepared to accept and trust the human woman, and believe that she meant no real harm.

The familiar vibration of the engines came to life suddenly beneath his seat, and he felt the crawler lurch back into movement. The expedition was off again... and he was part of it, an important part of it, specifically requested by Chu, co-commander of the whole affair, almost — both useful and wanted. He found himself looking around the worn cream paintwork of the cabin with a warm upswell of universal affection: for tousle-haired Lanuv down in the cockpit, her head just visible above the rim of the open door-seal; the boy Rhye, drowsing now in the back seat, his freckles in stark relief on a round face still pale from travel-sickness; and Cally.

Cally, who was not his, who would never be his, whom he must be careful not even to think of as his — but swift, dark, wise, gentle Cally who was here with him of her own free will, who had chosen to be here, seated only three rows in front of him, almost close enough to touch.... He would not touch her — he flushed painfully at the very thought — and besides, he had given his word, not only to her, but to himself. But there was a simple pleasure in the very knowledge that she was there and that he had a right to be here with her.

He was even glad of the humans’ presence. If the two of them had been alone, the air between them would have been thick with the old unspoken awkwardness — miserable awareness of each other, both physically and telepathically, that made any kind of normal conversation impossible. This was different. They had a task to carry out together, help to offer and duties to share. Perhaps they could even start again. Perhaps it could be like that first night in Blackport, that despite the pain, despite the suspicion, despite the wrenching fear, had seemed to him ever since to have been the happiest night he had ever known. Perhaps everything would be all right after all. Amery’s eyes were shut, and his sigh of contentment might almost have been mistaken for the sleepy breathing of a child.

Cally too felt the lurch and sway of the cabin as the crawler manœuvred back over the churned snow onto the relative smoothness of the cleared road. The tiny recessed viewport beside her seat showed her little save a whirl of flakes and glimpses of snowy slopes opposite, but for a moment she longed to be out there — out in the open away from the filtered, much-breathed air inside the cabin and away from the knowledge of what she was planning to do. It seemed to her that she had been left with very little other choice; and yet her instincts insisted that it was in a way a double betrayal, both of Amery’s trust and of the ideals that had once burned brightly enough to drive her from her own planet and the company of her own kind to fight what she had seen as unforgivable evil — until she had met Amery. Until she had become entangled in the complex skein of events that had ultimately led her here, as a representative of the Federation on a neutral planet, carrying out a mission that could ultimately benefit the whole human race — thanks to the technology of Auron.

Against her will she had been conscripted onto the other side; but she had found ideals, and loyalty, and simple kindness there where she had believed that none could exist, and she had caught a glimpse of rebels as they were seen by the great mass of people within the Federation. Not heroes, not even dashing outlaws, but insignificant trouble-makers striking puny, pettish blows against an empire that dwarfed them beyond all imagining — an empire seen by its subjects neither as benevolent nor as oppressive but merely as inevitable normality. All the death she had seen and inflicted — all the deaths on Saurian Major, all the friends she had lost, all the Federation troopers she had fought — counted for nothing in that vast indifferent scale. She was not ashamed of what she had done in the name of freedom; but she was sick to the heart, and she knew that she could no longer find the will to go on.

She would find herself a place on Insecution, and do what good she was able there until she had earned enough local currency to pay for a passage off-world to some place where her skills were needed; a planet where she could work to influence the policies of the Federation from the inside, as Amery believed. Perhaps she and Amery might meet again some day as friends, when he was older and wiser and famous galaxy-wide in his own field. She hoped so.

The crawler lurched again and seemed to surge forward as they reached the crest of the pass, and she could hear Lanuv in the cockpit swearing and coaxing at it as if it were a live thing. Cally smiled as the motion steadied, to the pilot’s croons of “Good girl... good girl....” She had become quite fond of Lanuv over the course of their brief acquaintance, and would be sorry to lose contact with her. The very clothes she currently had on, a warm grey sleeveless coverall worn under a shoulder-fastening uniform jacket, she owed to the young woman’s generosity.

Lanuv had tossed her an armful of clothing as she waited outside the shuttle-bay for the loading to be complete, with no more than a casual “Here, these should fit” and the advice, accompanied by a broad wink, to check the jacket carefully before putting it on. The jacket proved to hold not only a plausible-looking set of Federation identity records in the name of ‘Istan Darrova’, but also a four-inch knife secured inside the left forearm by a few tough threads and — trust Lanuv! — a small packet containing four graded self-administration stimulant sprays.

“Standard Space Command issue,” Lanuv had assured her during a quiet moment on the shuttle flight down. “Amery’s medical records show he’s cleared to use them, so they should be fine for you. The first one’ll give you a bit of a kick for the last stretch of uphill — number four’s strong enough to blast you out of orbit under your own power, and the others are somewhere in between. Don’t try to mix them.” She grinned. “Not unless you want to spend a week in sickbay covered in little green insects that only you can see.”

As always, she had shrugged aside Cally’s thanks. Listening with a smile to the unselfconscious stream of mingled sweet-talk and profanity from the cockpit, Cally silently wished her well.

Rhye was conscious of every sway and lurch of the cabin, and of very little else. As the crawler topped the rise its motion changed with a sudden sickening heave that wrenched an audible moan from him, and for a moment he was seriously worried that he was going to disgrace himself. He didn’t understand why Pilot ke Lanuv had picked on him for this trip when land travel always made him ill, but he was too miserable really to care. He concentrated on retaining the contents of his rebellious stomach, both fists clamped tight against the base of his ribcage. There was a thin sheen of sweat over his freckles.

* * *

The dark shape of the crawler crept through the pass. Occasionally it was obscured by thicker gusts of falling flakes, but when the veils parted it was still there, incongruously brown and blocky in a world of rounded, sweeping blue-shadowed snow-slopes and wrinkled grey rockfaces. Already the snow was beginning to settle into the sunken double tracks where the vehicle had passed, softening the outlines of the ribbed imprints of its treads. In a few hours there would be nothing to see but twin wavering lines of faintly dimpled hollows. The crawler trundled on, oblivious, machine-wise, both to the ephemeral nature of its trail and to the biting cold of the wind that plucked at it from behind and raced down the pass in sudden back-eddies to knife out sideways around the heavy hull, to no avail. An observer on the slopes above, sheltering for example beneath the great outcrop to the north, might have been tempted to compare the machine’s dogged creeping progress to the inexorable advance of a glacier.

As it happened, there was such an observer; but poetic considerations were very far from his mind. Wright watched the scene below with narrowed eyes, gauging his target’s advance yard by yard against a certain patch of rock opposite. When he judged the two to be precisely in line, he reached up, in a single unhurried gesture, to touch the transmission pad on the laser signaller that had been set up on the ledge behind him. The pre-coded pulses went out. A second later, there was an answering triple flash from low down on the far side of the valley. A second after that, the charge detonated.

In the open air, the high-pitched sound sounded strangely flat; but it was almost instantly swallowed up by the swelling roar as hundreds of tons of snow slid downwards. Ahead of the crawler, the side of the mountain began to move.


	26. White Flags

The first Cally knew of any of it was the violent swerve of the crawler that almost threw her off her seat. She hurriedly uncurled herself, jamming both feet downwards behind the seat supports and bracing her grip against the impact. The cabin tilted, slowly, inevitably... and then sank back. The engines died as the crawler slewed and then steadied. There was a long anxious moment as the three in the back exchanged glances; then, as it seemed there would be no accident after all, there was a sudden rush for the cockpit. Cally, sitting furthest forward, got there first.

“What happened?” she demanded of Lanuv, scrambling down into the cockpit as the other two crowded the doorway behind her. The monitor screens showed nothing but snow. “Where are we?”

“The whole valley’s blocked. It was all I could do to stop in time —” The pilot was flicking methodically through the views from the various external monitor-eyes — nose, port-side, upper hatch.... She gave a sigh of relief as the images of close-packed snow unexpectedly gave way to a welcome glimpse of overcast sky. “Well, the sensors have been knocked every which way, but we’re not buried at least.”

One of the aft-mounted pickups seemed to be responding to her commands, and she trained it round to give them a view along the length of the crawler’s hull. The nose had ploughed deep into a mass of loose snow that was blocking any view ahead, and the crawler had slewed across the valley as Lanuv tried to swerve clear; but the rear drive unit and about half the starboard side of the cabin were still out in the open, and there was no serious damage visible.

They surveyed the image in silence. “We were lucky,” Lanuv said finally, with deep conviction. “Another hundred yards — another fifty maybe — and we’d have been under that lot when it came down, tossed about like a ribbon in a slip-stream and suffocated under twenty feet of snow even if we’d survived. As it is, we ought to be able to back out with a little digging, maybe even pack it down firm enough with the anti-gravs to make a way over the top; and even if we’re stuck, we can sit here quite safely until a rescue team arrives —”

A sudden concussion, deafening in the confined space, interrupted her. Cally found herself flung off-balance as the hull beneath her feet jolted upwards with the shock-wave. She caught at Lanuv. The other woman stared at her. “That was an explosion.”

Cally nodded. “A grenade —”

Lanuv’s hands were hunting over the control boards. There was a brief hiss and clank from above and behind them as the external hatches locked down, and a lurch and background hum as the anti-gravs cut out and the whole massive body of the crawler sank against the ground. The view from the monitors changed as she switched through her remaining pickups one after another, trying to locate their attackers. One camera-eye yielded a brief glimpse of a handful of bulky dark figures on the slopes above the nose of the crawler before a second explosion further aft and high up on the hull sent the image into splintered static.

Cally put out a hand to support herself again, but there was no need. The sound was as shattering as before, but the grounded mass of the hull barely rocked.

Lanuv was breathing hard, but she looked up and gave Cally a half-grin. “Stalemate, I think. They can’t get any more grenades under the cabin, and the armour-plate on the upper hull should be proof against anything short of a portable neutron blaster — and they won’t be using one of those in this terrain.”

Battering on the hull outside, followed by a ringing sound that could have been clamps. Then a few moments’ silence. Lanuv frowned, but just as her lips parted there was an intense, high-pitched stab of sound followed by a flat concussion, echoed almost instantly by a second impact on the opposite side. An unpleasant burning smell began to filter through the ventilation system.

Cally identified it. “Genitam explosive.” She glanced at Lanuv, who shook her head, shutting off the ventilators.

“That won’t get through the plating — not in a hurry, anyhow. The fumes won’t do us much good, but there’s enough air in here to outlast their supply of explosives. They can’t get in, and we can’t get out. The difference is, they can’t afford to hang around, and we can.” She paused, her hand on the simple dial that operated the communications link. “I’ve nothing in particular against doing deals with rebels, but I prefer to do it on my terms and on my territory, not on theirs.”

“Rebels?” Cally stared at her, unwilling to understand. “But this is a medical mission. Why would we be attacked by rebels?”

Lanuv shrugged, indicating the slopes outside with a sweeping gesture of her free hand as the cockpit shuddered to the sound of further detonations. “You tell me, Istan. We’re Federation, aren’t we? Rebels’ll go for anyone on principle.” She held up her hand for silence, fitting the dangling headset over her jaw and ear.

“Control, this is Crawler Three. We are immobilised and under attack in the main pass just south of waypoint KA6. Request immediate assistance. Over —” She frowned, turning the dial rapidly back and forth between thumb and forefinger and then slamming it round to its end-stop again. “Come in, Control!” Receive — transmit — receive — The channel clicked uselessly. “Control, this is serious. We’re in trouble —”

Jaw set, she passed the headset over to Cally, who accepted it silently. “They won’t answer, Istan!”

“The link must be broken,” Cally protested, listening to the earpiece. It certainly sounded like an open channel — but the battering the crawler had been taking could easily have misaligned even a basic dedicated pel-wave transmitter pairing like this one. If the wave form was distorted, their transmissions could be missing the other half of the pairing altogether.

“Check for yourself.” Lanuv stood up abruptly and began clambering out of the cockpit, elbowing Amery and Rhye aside. Both young men looked nervous to the point of panic. She ignored them. “Control won’t answer, I tell you. They’ve been playing games all along, and I’ve had enough of it. I’m going to let off the distress beacon — that’ll bring rescue parties in from every installation on the planet, not to speak of the _Gergovia_ , the _Amritsar_ and the escort vessels. Yakostonok can pay the bill, and welcome to it....”

Her voice faded as she disappeared in the direction of the rear of the cabin. Rhye had vanished with her, after a moment’s hesitation; but Cally, starting to dismantle the control panel, glanced up to find Amery still hovering uncertainly in the doorway.

//It will be all right,// she promised him in response to the wordless plea he sent her. She could remember all too clearly the gut-wrenching fear of her own first time under fire. A column of Federation vehicles — a routine patrol, that was all, to assert the security of the area around the communications complex — had been passing through a narrow defile, and the survivors on Saurian Major had launched an attack. Inexperienced, unproven and not even native to the planet, she had not been entrusted with one of their meagre stock of weapons. Instead, she had been assigned to a back-up party whose rôle was to activate previously-laid land mines as the rear of the column passed in an attempt to cut off the possibility of retreat. Her own part in the proceedings had amounted to little more than ‘press-this-button-and-run’, and she had waited in obedience for the signal, crouched down behind the rocks, half-smothered in reddish dust as the awesome weight of the armoured vehicles lumbered by.

Something had gone wrong. She had not understood what — only that instead of the twin explosions she had been warned to expect, a full-scale fire-fight had erupted at the far end of the column, the searing atmospheric discharges of heavy weaponry drowning out the pitiful answering sniper-fire of the ground-based ambushers. There had been screaming, too. Nothing she had imagined had prepared her for the screaming.

The tail of the column had halted almost opposite her position, the trailing vehicle still short of the cleft rock that marked the site of the charges they had laid so carefully. Shutters had swung clear on the lower hull, exposing fully-charged weapons blisters. Frozen to the spot, Cally had found herself gazing down a yawning aperture that she instinctively knew meant annihilation. Then, in response to some command, along the entire column the weapons raked upwards in unison and the sides of the defile were engulfed in withering fire. Nothing living could have survived more than a few seconds. The air was choking with carbonised vegetation and the tiny deaths of thousands of arthropods — half-sentient vegetoids — swift-crawlers not swift enough to dart free.

Pinned down under the inferno of disintegration that howled overhead, any remaining consensus in the little group at the foot of the defile had succumbed in the grip of blind panic. Moments from what had seemed like certain death, Cally had clung blindly to her remembered orders: they must stay put and wait for the signal to activate their explosives, and never mind that the column was not in the right place, never mind that the signal would never come, never mind that in fact the Federation patrol’s retreat was the only thing that could save them now....

It had been a short-lived argument. Moments later a stray discharge had shattered the rocks that gave them an illusion of shelter, sending red-hot fragments scything through their refuge. Cally had been lucky. Knocked flat and half-blinded in the first instants of the blast, she had escaped the disembowelling shrapnel to lie tumbled and bloody at the bottom of the slope, camouflaged by the débris of her companions’ deaths. Taken for a corpse, she had survived the battle, to be welcomed back with surprise and pleasure by the rest of the ambush party, who had given the handful trapped at the foot of the defile up for dead.

It had not been a massacre after all, she had discovered. Most of the fighters had been in a position to retreat once the firing had started, and most of the injured had been dragged out of danger or crawled to safety unaided. Only her group had been trapped without an escape route when the head of the Federation column had unexpectedly caught sight of its would-be ambushers.

With hindsight, Cally knew now that it would have made no difference if she had not panicked. The moment she and the others had left cover, they would have been slaughtered in any case. Nothing, bar a fluke of pure luck of the kind that had saved Cally herself, could have allowed them to survive.

At the time, though, she had been too ashamed even to speak of what had happened. She had thrown herself into training with a grim determination to harden herself against the secret knowledge that she was a coward, and a resolve that her fear should claim no more lives. She could smile now at her own bravado... but twenty days after the Federation victory at the Ansher Cleft, a small party had lain in wait there for the next patrol, a trio of light surveillance quad-wheelers, to pass through, with the intention of detonating the unused charges as the quads crossed the mined strip; and Cally had volunteered to be among them. Liady had looked at her shrewdly and let her go, and she had been determined to vindicate Liady’s trust. The operation had been a complete success. Ghosts had been laid, not only for Cally, but for all of those who had been there....

//It will be all right,// she told Amery now. Once again, they were pinned down in a valley, immobile in the face of danger all around — but this time, it was she who was inside the vehicle, and it was not the Federation who were firing at her. Was this how the crews of those fragile quads had felt, then, in that moment when their confident superiority had disintegrated under the impact of the hidden destruction left behind by those they had believed defeated?

//It will be all right.// She set her mind firmly to the task of reassuring him. The Federation crews had been soldiers on a hostile planet. They had chosen to live in a world of kill or be killed, just as she too had done when she first came to Saurian Major. Amery was an unarmed civilian who had sought only to save lives. He had every right to be afraid; and those who were attacking the defenceless crawler were no better than bandits. She smiled at him and passed up the loosened control panel casing so that he could hold it for her while she knelt to investigate the simple circuitry of the pel-wave link.

She had expected to find the solid-state circuitry significantly out of alignment, perhaps with visible blast damage; but she had underestimated the crawler’s rugged construction. Short of physical dislocation there was little enough else that _could_ disrupt the link between a pair of pel-wave transmitters.... Cally frowned and tried a few simple tests. On impulse, she slid the headset back into its naked socket and flicked the dial to ‘transmit’.

“Hallo Control,” she said clearly, feeling a little foolish. “Control, can you hear me?”

“Receiving you loud and clear, unknown caller,” came back the reply in a bored contralto. “Please state call-sign, name and rank. Over.”

Cally hesitated a moment, trying to remember the formula Lanuv had used. “This is Crawler Three —” The connection went dead.

For a moment she thought the power cell must have become detached; but of course the comm system was powered from the crawler’s main charge reserves. She checked for a loose connection, found none. The system was basic, robust and idiot-proof — designed that way — and the only reason for a dedicated pel-wave link to go flat in mid-transmission like that was for one end of the pairing or the other to be deliberately cut off....

She glanced over her shoulder, disbelief still frozen on her face, to find Lanuv watching from the doorway in an uncharacteristic grim silence. In one hand she held a standard conical distress beacon.

“Take a look at this.” The pilot tossed the beacon in her direction and Cally fielded it automatically, almost fumbling the catch at the last moment. The device was far lighter than she had expected, and one side had been smashed open.

Lanuv displayed her other hand. From both palm and fingers trailed long strands of circuitry, charred beyond repair. “Laser knife, I reckon. Or else a small-scale plasma torch. Someone really doesn’t like us, Istan.” Her tone tried uncertainly for humour, but threatened to betray her, and she bit her lip.

“Control are keen as can be to make sure we turn up on time where we’re expected — but as soon as they hear we’re under attack they won’t even answer. They’re happy enough to talk to _you_ — until they find out who you are. They send us out in a nice slow crawler, making certain sure we get no choice as to which one we pick, and when we run into trouble it turns out by some strange coincidence that instead of screaming for help on half a hundred frequencies, this crawler’s distress beacon has been turned into toast by some unknown trigger-happy maniac....”

She swung herself down into the cockpit and dropped her handful of blackened circuitry absently onto the pilot’s seat, wiping her soiled palm down her thigh. Deliberately, she turned to hold each of them in her gaze, one after another: Istan beside her, pale-faced Amery in the doorway above and Rhye peering nervously through from beyond. “If any of you sees different, then you can let me know; but it seems to me we’ve been set up. Sold out. Someone at Yakostonok’s taking cash from this little lot —” she jerked a thumb round at the continuing assault on the side of the hull — “to let them get their hands on what we’re carrying, and we’re on our own.”

There was an ugly little silence. //This is Blackport,// Amery sent bleakly to Cally, //Blackport all over again. They will lie and cheat and kill to gain control of a drug they have never seen — a ‘miracle cure’ that has not even been tested!// She had no comfort to offer him.

Lanuv surveyed the members of her beleaguered command again, both eyebrows raised. “Well, with no chance of reinforcements, we’ve got no real choice left. I don’t suppose any of you has got such a thing as a bit of white cloth on you?”

The two telepaths shared a puzzled glance, but before either of them could reply, Rhye had put up a hand, rather shyly. With the other hand he was unwinding a crumpled white scarf from inside the collar of his flightsuit. Lanuv took it, with a nod of thanks, and glanced down at the disembowelled control board. “Get this back together, will you, Istan?”

Mystified, Cally obeyed; but when Lanuv leaned over her to release the hatch locks, and then thrust her way past the others up out of the cockpit and began to climb up the rungs giving access to the emergency hatch at the front of the cabin, she scrambled up in her turn and caught at the other woman’s jacket as she disappeared. “Lanuv, no, stop — what are you doing?”

“I told you, I’ve got no choice.” Lanuv’s face was half-hidden by the shadows under the hatch, but her voice was bitter. She flourished the scarf. “I’m going to wave the white flag.”

Cally stared at her, aghast. “ _What_?”

“I’m going out to surrender,” Lanuv repeated sharply. She came down a couple of rungs to look closely at Cally as if she suspected her of perpetrating some elaborate joke. Apparently Cally passed the test.

“White flag of surrender, Istan. It’s a human thing. Helps avoid unfortunate mistakes.” She gave her a brief lopsided grin. “Why, what do your people use?”

“We would send a messenger painted in red, with empty hands, to symbolise that we had been overcome by our losses....” Cally’s reply was rather abstracted. She understood now; but she still did not like it. “Do we have to give in to their demands, Lanuv?”

“We haven’t even found out what their demands are, yet.” Lanuv scowled. “Anyhow, without an outside rescue they’re bound to get in here eventually — and they won’t be in any too friendly a mood when they do. I don’t mean to get myself martyred for the sake of the Central Science Complex’s research programme when Amery and his lot have got the recipe and can cook up another batch of this Soteros stuff in no time. It’s not worth fighting for, do you hear?”

She shook off Cally’s grasp and swarmed up the rungs as if they had been hot enough to burn her. Cally heard the hatch crack open and tensed, half-expecting a fusillade of shots; but the white scarf seemed to work its magic. After a moment there was a dull clang as the hatch cover was flung back, and daylight filtered faintly down from above. Even Lanuv’s boots had disappeared from view.

Cally, staring upwards, found Rhye and Amery at her elbow. The three of them listened to the shouted parley outside in silence.

* * *

“Drop your weapons. Hands up. Everybody outside!” The bearded young man who had dropped through the hatch was armed to the teeth and looked only too eager for an excuse to try out his arsenal.

//Do as he says.// Cally put a stinging touch of compulsion in her order. Amery had tensed ominously as he caught the eager glance at the biotransit cases behind them, and above all this was not the moment for attempted heroics. Later there might come a time.... Keeping a wary eye both on the young scientist and on their black-bearded captor, she slowly drew the lightweight service-issue weapon from her belt and let it fall at her feet before raising empty hands. She indicated with a nod that the others should do the same.

Their captor gave them a cheerful grin. “Good. Now up the ladder, one at a time.” He looked at Amery. “You first.”

Amery glared back, hands held ostentatiously high. “I assume we are permitted to use our hands to climb with?” It was a brave try; but his voice was not entirely under control, and he flushed scarlet as the other man laughed.

“You can use ‘em for anything you like, provided they’re in full view — and it’s decent!” A nudge with the sharp end of a sturdy wedge-shaped blade as Amery’s painful flush darkened. “Go on. Get moving.” He thrust Rhye forward, glanced at Cally. “You next. Then you.”

Standing obediently below the hatch as Rhye’s plump rear disappeared upwards, Cally allowed herself seriously to consider the knowledge that she could disarm and overpower her guard before he was even aware that she had moved. She could wipe that smile from his face in an instant....

“Right. Last one. Up you go.” The shove that accompanied the words was not ungentle, and Cally pulled herself up onto the first rungs without a backward glance. Later there might come a time... but not now. Not yet.

* * *

The wind outside bit deep enough to leave her shivering in an instant. Abruptly, the clumsy multi-layered wrappings worn by the rebels began to seem rather less ridiculous than they had appeared from within the cramped confines of the crawler.

There were perhaps a dozen of the heavily-clad fighters, counting the young man currently pulling himself out of the hatch onto the roof of the crawler behind her. Men and women alike were encased in nested layers of bulky clothing and scavenged fabric, as if half-a-dozen ill-assorted suits had been pulled apart, mingled and recombined into a single all-encompassing garment. The rebels might almost have been taken for a single set of clone-siblings. Only glimpses of beard — black or brown for the most part, save for one bearing the grey of authority — served to distinguish between the sexes. Cally, instinctively hunching deep into her collar in an attempt to shield her own face from the stinging wind-blown flakes, could instantly guess at the reason why beards seemed so popular amongst the men.

The three captives below had been gathered into a tight group at the edge of the ring of trampled snow surrounding the half-buried vehicle, huddling close both for mutual warmth and moral support. Possession being nine-tenths of ownership, and seniority having its privileges, Lanuv appeared to have appropriated the white scarf for her own use. Despite the jaunty air of defiance it lent her, she looked every bit as wary — and cold — as Cally herself.

Their captors were growing impatient. Prompted by elbow-jabs from behind — punctuated with the point of the wedge-knife when she was slow off the mark — and aided by the newly-gouged scars in the armour-plating, Cally made the brief scramble to the ground, where she was firmly herded to join the other prisoners. Amery was shivering violently and would not meet her eyes. The slick, brittle surface of his mind betrayed the effort it was costing him to keep even this semblance of self-control. The other two, less imaginative and more sturdily built, were putting up a better front; but Cally had to admit, even to herself, that things were not looking particularly good for any of them. With one shoulder pressed against Rhye’s welcome warmth and Amery’s unresponsive fingers clasped in her other hand, she traded back stare for stare with the ring of hooded faces closing in around them, her head held high against the icy wind.

“Well now....” Grey-beard, whom she had marked out as the leader, had shouldered his way to the front. The others deferred to him, confirming her guess. “Which of you is the med-tech?”

For a moment Cally was completely nonplussed. She exchanged a swift glance with Lanuv, who shrugged and told him flatly: “We’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

Grey-beard sighed, and glanced up at the sky, then back along the pass. The snow was beginning to fall more thickly. “Listen, we don’t have time for heroics. I don’t know what you may have heard about us —”

“That we eat Federation babies like them for breakfast, most likely.” A guffaw from the man to his left, tall and broad, with a short beard of coarse grizzled curls and the same deep guttural accent they had heard at the spaceport. “Look at them — white as the tail-tuft on a _myanka_ , and scared stiff —”

“That’s enough, Semyon.” Grey-beard’s eyes narrowed, and the other man seemed to shrink back. But the gaze that returned to the prisoners was level and open enough. “I give you my word — my personal word — that no harm will come to any of you while I can prevent it.”

His voice carried conviction, but his eyes were on Lanuv. Cally frowned. “Why?”

She made it a challenge, and found herself facing the same shrewd hazel stare. “Because we need your help.”

Grey-beard held her gaze a moment longer, then glanced around the others. “Now, we know that you are carrying medical supplies. Which of you is in charge of them?”

“I am.” Semyon’s taunt had brought a stain of furious colour to Amery’s face, and now he pulled his hand free of Cally’s grasp to fold his arms tightly across his breast, pale eyes blazing. “And what makes you think that I would ever agree to give my help to barbarous fanatics who attacked us?”

“Common humanity, perhaps!” The interruption came this time from a younger man — Cally thought it was the same youngster who had taken possession of the crawler on the rebels’ behalf — and the glare that had quelled Semyon failed to silence him. “You want to study _lerva_ -plague? Well, we’re dying from _lerva_ -plague up here! We can provide you any number of patients as study material — more than you’ll ever get from the Central Hospital, at any rate — and all we ask you to do is to use your precious drug to save their lives along the way. It doesn’t seem to me that’s too much to expect — unless Federation medical ethics take more account of politics than of human suffering, of course.”

“Since that is the case, Larin, it is undoubtedly too much to expect our guests to express much sympathy for our situation.” Grey-beard’s tone was dry; but he was gauging the effect of Larin’s outburst with an apparent satisfaction that made Cally wonder, briefly, just how impromptu it had been.

He gave a courteous nod in Amery’s direction. “If you still wish it, we can discuss politics later... but however barbarous you may claim it to be, the fact remains that we have captured both you and your cargo and are currently in a position to make whatever use of either we may desire. Obviously, I hope you will decide to help us of your own accord; but you’ve probably gathered already that as far as your ‘medical supplies’ are concerned, even if we wanted to we couldn’t afford the luxury of offering you a choice. We intend to appropriate your drugs and attempt to cure our sick, with or without your co-operation — and however much it may stick in your throat, I suggest that from your point of view the results will be less wasteful if you agree to give us the benefit of your knowledge.”

He turned away abruptly, as if to dismiss the prisoners from his attention. “Larin, get back in that crawler and get the loading hatch open. Take Kotko, Marfia and Avdoty and get the cargo shifted out so we can get on the move. Do you know what you’re looking for? You know where it is? Good man. Motei, Semyon, you know what to do. Mashka, the sleds —”

“Now you just hold hard a minute!” Lanuv brushed the settling snow from her jacket and made a sudden lunge for his attention, only to stop short, taken aback, as weapons swung to cover her from all directions. She glared at him across four feet of snow. “We’ve heard a lot about Amery and _lerva_ -plague. Just what have you got planned for me and the rest of my command? Where do we fit in?”

Grey-beard stood looking back at her for a long moment. He made no sign that Cally could see, but all around them weapons were reluctantly lowered as the rebels turned back to their tasks. Finally, when only the two of them remained, the still point at the heart of the whirl of activity as the crawler was plundered, he took a pace forwards to grasp her shoulders and gave her an unexpected grave smile.

“ _That_ , Officer ke Lanuv —” he was watching her wary face closely — “is one of a number of things we have to talk about, you and I. In private. Soon.” He glanced across to his left. “Yestukha!”

A tall woman set down her burden and looked up, starting towards him. He indicated Cally and the other two with a nod. “Take the prisoners round to the lee of the crawler and tie them up.”

“No!” Cally jerked her wrists free of Yestukha’s hold, found a gun-muzzle jammed against her ribs and bit her lip, trying for a more placatory tone. “Listen, there is no need — we will go with you —”

Yestukha hesitated, awaiting confirmation from her leader; but it was not forthcoming. “Gag them.” His eyes were cold. “And get each sled on the move as soon as it’s loaded. I’ll have a party sent back to deal with the prisoners when the last load’s safely up. Meanwhile, this Federation officer and I have matters to discuss. Alone.”


	27. Consummation

Inside the observation module, the dimmed illumination panels had been set to a blue tinge. So had the back-lighting on such of the instruments as had been powered up. The effect was of faint daylight filtering down from above into the cool, shadowed interior through the crevices in the snow that covered them. It amused Servalan to fancy herself at the bottom of a crevasse, rather than inside an artificially-lit module concealed by a week’s worth of snowdrift... and the Federation Supreme Commander’s whims were to be obeyed as implicitly as her slightest command. The patrol of low-ranking local troops originally assigned to this surveillance duty had grasped that fact with gratifying speed. Leading-Patroller Burton had not only actively connived at her assumption of overall command, but had also been responsible for the discreet blind eye that had been turned to her arrival on board the troop carrier scheduled to transport his patrol.

Servalan allowed her gaze to dwell appreciatively on Burton. Believing himself unobserved, he was currently engaged in lounging against the wall of the module, scratching at one bicep in a casual, slumped pose that could not entirely conceal his athletic physique. The man was undeniably decorative.

Fair colouring and blue eyes, coupled with wide cheekbones slanting down to a finely-chiselled chin, and the crisply waving hair that shaded his forehead, were distinctive enough on this planet for women to take a second look; but it was the brief reckless flash of his grin that transformed an attractive man into the devastating charmer who had apparently reaped a swathe through the affections of Insecution’s leading matrons. She had not troubled herself to enquire into the details of his conquests, save for those of the three separate ladies who had on recent consecutive nights enjoyed the unconventional hospitality of the Governor’s own official ground-car, thanks to Nastasia Inkol’s indisposition and the impressive appetites and ingenuity of Burton himself. One of the three had proved to be a lady of mature charms and very high position indeed; and if the Governor were ever to gather just where, when and what had been going on between her cousin and the common soldier who had been on night guard duty outside the security vault, he might consider himself lucky to escape with exile from the city, let alone dismissal from the service.

Once the precise extent of the Supreme Commander’s information on his more unorthodox activities had been made clear to him, Burton had proved only too eager to co-operate. Since his record showed his intelligence to be considerably greater than his reliability, however, Servalan had chosen to limit his involvement to the mere mechanics of her own inclusion in the surveillance party. From time to time over the last few interminable days she had been inclined to regret that decision. A little... diversion... would have been more than welcome, and Burton understood the rules of the game. Understood them all too well, unfortunately; beneath the animal magnetism lay a shrewd opportunist. In any case, she preferred her diversions to be a little more exclusive, on the male side at least. The Supreme Commander had no taste for other women’s leavings.

It had been Venn’s information that had led her to Burton. There were other members of the patrol who, for one reason or another, were vulnerable to pressure, but control over their leader was far more satisfactory. It had also been the Intelligence Commander who had researched and supervised the positioning of the observation module a full week ago, predicting the likely tactics and site of Wright’s ambush with an accuracy that almost rendered the remote surveillance network unnecessary. In the event, if it had not been for the concealing snow, a simple viewport in the side wall of the module would have offered Servalan a grandstand view down over the progress of the whole attack, from the careful laying of the charges to the final surrender. Indeed, there had been one moment when Wright and a couple of his followers had passed so close that she had begun to fear that either the placing of the module itself or the hasty entry of the patrol, barely an hour earlier, must have been detected, with potentially disastrous results; but the rebels had settled down into an observation post of their own barely twenty yards further along the slope, apparently totally oblivious of the watchers’ presence. The knowledge that Wright — that Varro was not only securely under surveillance but almost literally within her grasp served to lend a distinct piquancy to the tedious ensuing wait for the crawler... for the first twenty minutes, at least.

Whatever his other defects, within the narrow sphere of his Intelligence work Realgar Venn was undoubtedly an outstanding officer. It was almost unfortunate, in a way, that he would have to be disposed of. Of course, he currently had no idea that she had seen through him. She glanced across, a slight smile on her lips, at the massive column which housed the main scan mounting to her left where Venn was currently on duty, his head and shoulders entirely engulfed within the upper half of the column, and only his hands on the control grips still visible to either side. As Servalan herself had rapidly discovered, the scan column had been designed for operation by a tall and muscular man. Anyone else who attempted to use it for more than a short period of time suffered not only tedium but growing discomfort. Venn, naturally, had been the obvious choice.

Her smile of satisfaction widened, and for a moment she felt almost charitable towards him. After the long wait, the moment to make her move was almost at hand — Varro and his rebels must be preparing even now to vanish back into the mountains — and meanwhile, the current situation had its compensations. She allowed her gaze to drift back in Burton’s direction, and found him watching her openly. Their eyes met. Servalan veiled her amusement behind demurely lowered lashes as Burton’s shoulders went back and one hand crept up to give a jaunty twist to his moustache. Oh, there were definitely compensations.

“Have they finished yet, Venn?”

Despite herself she had allowed an edge of impatience to creep into her voice; but Venn, stooping out, blinking, from under the scan mounting, gave her only a puzzled stare in return. One hand crept up absently to rub at the back of his neck.

“Ma’am, it’s all over long since. They’ve got the crawler’s cargo hatch standing wide open and the best part of the cargo ferried off up the mountain already on those little sleds they brought —”

“I am aware of that, Commander. It was, after all, the precise circumstance we were positioned here to confirm. If you mean to give a second recital of your earlier observations, I recommend you to reserve it for the Governor, who will no doubt be delighted.”

Venn blinked again, the barbed words sliding over the armour of his incomprehension like grappling claws over a force field. “Begging your pardon, but you asked —”

Sighing, Servalan set her sights lower. “We’ve done our duty by Insecution — the Soteros bait is taken. I want a report on Varro and the prisoners, dolt!”

Another blank look. “Well, the prisoners is what they’re arguing about —”

“Arguing?” Servalan drew a sharp breath. She had half a mind to slap him, just to see some reaction cross that placid face; instead she slipped past his bulky body and slid under the scan mounting herself, pulling the viewer across to eye-level.

He knew how to handle the equipment, she had to admit that. The scene was vivid and tight-focused on Varro and his followers, even the dull light outside almost blindingly bright after the cool shadows around her. There was no sound. Venn’s damp fingers were fumbling with the earpiece hanging against the side of her neck; she struck his hand away and slid the tiny unit in behind her own ear, tight against the bone....

“If you don’t trust Yestukha, you can check them yourself!” Varro’s voice was as clear as if he had been standing beside her. “They’re tied hand and foot, I tell you — they’re hardly going to rise up and tear me to pieces bare-handed in the fifteen minutes it will take you to get the last lot of sleds to the top of the ridge and come back down for the prisoners. What’s the matter with you, Semyon? Still afraid I’m going to double-cross you? You’re going to be the one with the cargo this time, you know — and the one with the option not to bother to come back.”

“You’ve no call to rake up that old matter again — that was years back, and water under the bridge.” Big Semyon was scowling. “And don’t try to put me off — one of them’s not tied.” A jerk of his head towards Lanuv, just visible at the edge of the image. “What are you planning to do about her?”

“I’ll deal with that one myself. I want her to talk, and I fancy she’ll talk more freely when we’re alone. We’ll do better with her good-will — so she’s not tied, no, but she’s not armed either.” Teeth flashed in grim smiles all round as he made a show of drawing the wide-barrelled projectile gun from his belt, and Servalan’s own mouth curved.

So Varro wanted a nice quiet talk with his long-lost daughter, did he? How touching... and how pathetically predictable. He had played right into her hands. Irrationally, she was almost disappointed in him.

She stretched up, found the control grips, and slid the focus of the remote sensors over to centre the image on the figure of Lanuv. Hunched close and huddled against the snow-laden wind, the young officer was regarding the leader of her captors with a most un-filial glare. Tied or not, she was obviously a prisoner, and equally obviously both afraid and furious. Servalan watched her, still smiling.

Your rôle is almost played out now, my dear. A few minutes more, and your part will be done, the part for which I groomed you so carefully.... Oh, it was Varro who pitchforked you into the Academy, into a world for which you were neither qualified nor suitable, but it was I who kept you there after he had so carelessly alerted me to your existence. It was I who ensured that your assessments at the end of each course were revised upwards to the minimum necessary to scrape you a pass, despite the quality of your work. I was the kind officer who took such an interest in your poor mother and her sad story, and expressed such disgust at the unheard-of neglect shown by an Alpha officer towards a low-grade girl who’d once formed his few months’ brief fancy. We spoke only a few times — you were hardly my chief concern — but it was enough, I think, to waken the seed that already lay dormant in you when first we met.

You are your mother’s daughter, Arta ke Lanuv. She was a fool in all the ways that matter, and you are not; but you have that same fatal flaw of obsession. I made you my tool, but it was Varro who created you. Whatever comes of this fond reunion, it will not be what he expects — and yet it will be of his doing for all that, and he will know it. You are a more apt and perfect revenge that any I could have devised, and he gave you all unknowing into my very hands.

The next few minutes will be the most important moments of your short and undistinguished career, Officer ke Lanuv. Indeed, they will be the only justification for the travesty of its existence. Play your part well... for I shall be there to prompt you if you seem to forget. I would not miss the comedy to come, not for all the worlds.

She pulled the focus back and took one last look at the little group out there in the snow, dwindling rapidly now as one by one the rebels turned away to take their burdens up the mountain, leaving the last two there alone. Sturdy young officer and grey-beard outlaw, they both watched each other warily, neither willing to make the first move.

The scene was set. Servalan savoured that final image with pleasure as she extracted herself from the scan mounting’s massive embrace. It was almost time for the last actor to make her appearance.

She glanced around, blinking a little in the renewed half-darkness, and caught the Leading-Patroller’s eye. “Set two of your men to clear the exit, Burton — carefully, there may be a search around here afterwards and I don’t want the side of the module uncovered — and prepare to move out on my command. On my command, and not before. Understood?” She got a salute and a flashing grin in reply; then men were suddenly on the move all around her, the lounging patrol transformed into instant activity in a minor military miracle that she still, sometimes, forgot to take for granted.

Behind her the side exit slid open, admitting a gust of icy air and a flurry of loosened snow across the floor. The Supreme Commander shivered and drew up the fur-lined hood of her jacket, pulling the fastenings tight around her throat. She watched the two men at the door for a moment with narrowed eyes as they hurriedly cut and lifted away blocks of the drift, using a heated blade; but it was clear even to her that, Insecution natives both, they knew more about handling snow than she had ever cared to learn. She turned aside impatiently and caught sight of her reflection in one of the darkened monitor screens.

Framed in clinging white fur, the flawless oval of her own face stared back at her in swift appraisal. The cool blue light touched her with its magic, clothing her in silver and ice-white, laying faint flattering shadows over moon-pale skin, and glancing back in a distant starlight gleam from the crystals at her ears and from the depths of her eyes. A Winter Queen for a winter planet.... Servalan was still smiling as she slipped outside, into the snow that was now once more steadily drifting down.

* * *

“All right —” Lanuv ducked her head angrily, blinking snow from her eyes as a gust hit her — “what is it you want from me? Are you trying to strike some sort of bargain? Is that it?”

She glanced around warily, edging backwards. “Just what are you after — and how much choice am I going to get about it?”

“We don’t have much time.” In contrast, her captor sounded weary. “I mean you no harm... but I’m not asking — or expecting — you to trust me. Just to listen — or is that too much to ask?” He took a deliberate pace backwards in his turn, drawing the weapon from his belt, and tossed it at arm’s-length onto the trampled ground between them.

Lanuv’s eyes rose to meet his in the shocked silence that followed. They stared at each other for a moment through the fine curtain of driving snow. “Go on,” she told him, finally.

“I’ve spent the last three years helping to keep the Federation off Insecution — but I came from the Federation myself. They call me Endymion Wright.” The ghost of a pause. “You might have heard of me.”

“Sorry, I don’t come from round here.” Lanuv managed a creditable drawl. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“I know where you come from, Arta ke Lanuv.” The name was deliberately stressed. Quickly now, before she could interrupt: “I spent twenty years of my life on the planet where you were born. We lived within fifty miles of each other — I was Principal of the Federation Space Academy there when you were a child.... My name was Andra Varro.”

A definite pause this time; but there was no hint of recognition or even acknowledgement in the young officer’s suspicious, frightened glare. “Look, I don’t know how you know my name, I don’t know what you want, but —”

Varro made a sudden helpless move, only to catch himself back as she shrank from him. “I’m your father, Arta!”

It was as if he had slapped her across the face. She stared at him, colour draining from her cheeks. “My father — you? _You_?” Hazel eyes searched his expression almost desperately; but whatever she read there seemed to frighten her. “Dear sweet bright gem-shards —” in a half whisper — “it’s true, isn’t it?”

She took three steps forward, her white features contorting suddenly. “Don’t you think you left it a little late, ‘Father’? Twenty years later and half a galaxy away, and _now_ you decide you want to come back?” She spat convulsively in his face and recoiled as if physically sick.

“Arta —”

“Stop calling me that! I’m Lanuv — I’ve always been Lanuv. Arta was my mother’s name —” She broke off, visibly trying to take a grip on herself.

“You destroyed my mother’s life, you know that?” Low and vicious. “I learned to hate you before I could even walk. She thought you would come for her, she really did. She had no time for the rest of the world — no time for a child — she barely even left our rooms in case there might be word from you. Oh yes, she was out of her mind, I worked that one out for myself in the end, thank you, but it was you that made her that way. And all the time you were sitting there not a hundred miles away, sitting sweet and pretty out in the Academy —”

“Child, she never told me about you. I didn’t even know you existed until she was already dead —” Varro sounded badly shaken. Whatever he’d expected from her, it hadn’t been naked hostility.

“So you’d have come for my sake but not for hers. What do you call that, novelty value?”

Despite her efforts, there was an edge of hysteria in Lanuv’s voice. Servalan noted it with enjoyment. Time to show her hand. She rose softly to her feet, brushing snow from her suit, and picked her way over towards them.

It was Lanuv who caught sight of her first. Servalan watched the young woman’s expression stiffen in shock, closely followed by the second shock of recognition, and barely contrived to conceal her own amusement. She was waiting for the moment which would surely come any time now, when Varro in his turn would swing round to follow the line of his daughter’s stare....

Their eyes met. For a split second his gaze was blind with disbelief; then it slid away, to flicker from Lanuv over to the wrecked crawler and then back to herself. A sort of sick understanding was dawning now on his face... but in the instant that he had recognised her, she knew she had finally won. Whatever was still to come, even if somehow he contrived to escape her altogether, something had irrevocably changed between them. It was Servalan who held the whip-hand now.

She watched him — watched his expression as surprise was replaced by eager relief on Lanuv’s face while she hurried to the senior officer’s side — and let him see her enjoyment. Your daughter looks to me, Varro, not to you. She is mine to use and dispose of as I please, for so long as I choose to lift a finger to make her so; and she will never be yours. This time, at least, you will not evade your past.

“— should still be time, I reckon, to catch the whole of the rest of the group if we go after them at once,” Lanuv was saying urgently. “We could have held out for another half-hour or more, easily, if I’d only known you’d picked up our calls, and none of this would have happened. Ma’am, I’m sorry — I didn’t know there was another Federation unit in the area — I had to use my own judgement —”

“And you acted exactly as the situation required.” Servalan’s voice was honey over steel. She spared Lanuv a fraction of her attention, though the rest, as before, remained on Varro. “I’m sure you understand why it was not possible for your crew to be briefed in advance. In order to make certain that the rebels would take the bait, it was necessary for the situation to appear as convincing as possible — and your reluctant surrender was an unfeigned masterpiece of conviction. By now I imagine your attackers can have no doubt at all as to the value of your cargo; nor any shadow of suspicion as to its true nature....” She lingered caressingly over the insinuation, waiting for Varro’s control to crack.

“You really haven’t changed since your cadet days, have you?” He was edging forwards, closing the gap between them. The eyes fixed on hers never once glanced downward. “You still see command as gratification without responsibility — and this time you’ve over-reached yourself. You had me fooled completely, but that wasn’t enough. You wanted the pleasure of making sure I realised just how clever you’d been; so you had to come in person, alone, and _too soon_ —”

He flung himself abruptly forward and down, towards the discarded gun on the snow between them, in the move she’d been expecting. Servalan took a quick pace back, bringing the hand that held her own weapon into full view. She activated the short-range audio pickup even as the young officer at her side was launching into an instinctive dive of her own to snatch the firearm from under Varro’s grasp.

“Burton: now!”

The struggle on the ground lasted only a few seconds, but when the combatants rolled apart, snow-encrusted and gasping, they found themselves surrounded by a ring of impassive faces. Each man’s aim was braced and unwavering.

“I came in person, yes, but hardly alone,” Servalan told her quarry sweetly. “And — while I am well aware of the imminent return of the remainder of your group, and while a shot from that antiquated percussion carbine of yours would no doubt serve to hasten that event — I’m afraid it seems unlikely that it will be your part to fire it.”

Lanuv, younger, closer, and less bulkily clad, had succeeded in securing the weapon before the older man had even touched it. She crouched now in the snow, breathing hard, with the gun in her hands trained, at a range of a few feet, upon its owner. Though she seemed unconscious of the cold, she was shivering, and her eyes held the sick, wild look of one who was very close to the edge. Few of those who had known her on board the _Gergovia_ would have recognised her now.

Varro himself, struggling to his knees empty-handed, seemed in scarcely better shape. His hood had fallen back, betraying a glimpse of exposed scalp through the thinning wiry hair, and the scarring beneath the beard was suddenly, brutally, evident. It was the face of a condemned man awaiting sentence from the arbiters of his tribunal. It was the exquisite consummation of long years of pursuit; and it was everything Servalan had dreamed of. Her own cheekbones were flushed high with delicate colour, and there was pure pleasure in the cruelty of her smile.

Varro’s mouth twisted in bitter response. “It seems you have learnt something after all — ambitious cadet.”

“Oh, I’ve changed, Varro. A great deal has changed; and you not least. How long, old man, since you lost your edge? How long since you ceased to enjoy command and its gratifications and were forced to console yourself with preaching against them instead?” She slid a swift glance sideways at the girl crouched between them. “After all, who could be better qualified to preach on the abuse of power than Andra Varro, Principal of the Academy?”

Lanuv stirred, and the snow that had settled in the folds of her sleeve was plucked away by the wind in an instant as her grip tightened on Varro’s gun. “The Academy....” The words were slow and dragging, almost slurred, and she frowned. “That year the school suddenly put me in for the Academy... I never understood.... That was you, it must have been.”

The sudden eagerness in her father’s eyes was almost pitiful. “I got you into the Academy, Ar— child.” He tried a tentative smile. “The test scores aren’t that important; no-one questioned it. I’ve arranged to do the same often enough as a favour to others in the Civil Administration —”

“So you reckoned you’d take me away from the only people I knew and the school I’d grown up in, and dump me into your world, where I didn’t understand any of the answers or how I was supposed to act. You had me trained for a career in space flight when I didn’t even know enough about it to have any idea if that was what I wanted, just because you knew you could?” Her voice rose and cracked in disbelief. Varro was staring at her.

“Child, that school institute where I found you was a lower-grade sinkhole, a dormitory to train the unwanted. The Space Academy provides the best general and technical education influence can buy. If I’d left you where you were, you’d have been lucky so much as to qualify for a job like your mother’s —”

“You couldn’t stand for me to be like Arta, could you? You wanted me in space because that’s the way you went when you were young — you wanted to wipe my mother out of me and make believe I was all yours. You thought you could change my whole life for me just like you did with hers, and all the time you never even had the guts to tell me who you were —”

“What became of your mother’s life was self-inflicted. I had nothing to do with it. I knew nothing about it. She walked out on me without a word when she chose to stage her grand tragedy — and never troubled to mention that little fact, did she? She lived in a world of her own long before I crossed her path; she tried to drag both of us in, you and I, and make us fit. What did she ever do for you? What sign did she ever give that she saw you at all? All I tried to do was to pull you out of the dead-end life she’d left you in, give you a chance at the stars and a future you could never have known as you were then. I’d have hoped any daughter of mine ought to be able to see that!”

“You’ve got some nerve, to play the innocent after all that’s happened. To try to claim me as a daughter of yours when you weren’t even there to put your name to the registry when I was born.” Lanuv’s voice was shaking almost as much as her aim. She seemed almost to have forgotten the weapon in her hands. Servalan frowned. Time was running short, and the snow was falling more and more thickly around them....

“You honestly can’t see what you did to her, can you?” Lanuv burst out finally. “But then for you she wouldn’t have meant much, just one of many. The one who didn’t know any better than to let herself actually feel something for you. The one who wasn’t only in it for what she could get. The one without enough sense to see you for what you are —” a sobbing breath — “you smooth-talking Alpha bastard!”

And there it was, the perfect cue. “Oh no, my dear —” the edge of laughter in Servalan’s mocking words was not entirely feigned — “I rather think that must be you....”

Her eyes caught Varro’s into a complicity of involuntary amusement. For a fatal moment there was a bond between them, two senior officers sharing the joke at the expense of an upstart inferior.

Servalan caught a glimpse of stunned betrayal in Lanuv’s face as the girl turned; then the world exploded, violently. She triggered her own weapon instinctively in the unthinking instant before she knew herself to be unharmed.

“Ma’am? Ma’am, are you all right?”

Servalan clawed blood from her eyes in a blind frenzy of revulsion at her own trembling. She should have anticipated that the girl would turn against her. It was obvious, so obvious, with hindsight.

Burton’s face swam into view, hovering close to hers with humiliating concern. She knew how she must look. There was blood everywhere, and worse than blood; on herself, on the snow, on Lanuv crumpled stunned at her feet, on Varro... on what was left of Varro. The projectile weapon killed with none of the clean, searing efficiency of an energy discharge. If she had been a fraction slower with her own stun-shot before Lanuv brought the gun round to fire a second time....

She choked down a shudder of reaction. “Of course I’m all right, you fool — no thanks to you and your men!” Snow was settling on her jacket, each crystal veined instantly in scarlet... she forced herself to tear her glance away, focusing on the handsome, broad-boned face in front of her.

“Give me your coat.”

He hesitated, eyes creasing in confusion, and her tone sharpened to a whiplash of command. “Do it!” Already she was stripping off her thick jacket with hands that twitched in revulsion. There was enjoyment to be derived, still, from his uncertain expression as he slowly unfastened his own garment and held it out.

The long coat was badly cut and coarsely-made, even by Insecution standards; common soldier’s issue — but the mountain air was bitterly cold, and she wrapped the welcome male-scented warmth around her body with barely a moment’s reluctance. Its bulky length would help conceal any remaining traces of violent death, at least.... She wadded up the soiled jacket and flung it at his feet.

“Get rid of that.” She turned her shoulder on him deliberately. “And get your men to take this one —” she indicated Lanuv with a fastidious nudge of her boot — “back to the troop carrier. I want her.”

She watched as the limp body was lifted carefully free, then picked her own cautious way across the befouled snow to crouch beside the other. The face was almost untouched.... She stroked his cheek, making a parody of the caress. “No last words, Andra?”

Incredibly, he heard her. Blood-flecked lips contorted into what might have been a smile. “...you lose... this time, Supreme... Commander.... all dying anyway....”

“Oh, I think not. The plague was hardly a coincidence, my dear. Surely you must have guessed? I have no intention of letting it run its course; that would be far too easy an escape for the troublesome rebels of Insecution —”

She broke off sharply. The face beneath her was slack and unmoving, her own words all too obviously wasted. Somehow, the lines of the frozen features seemed to preserve a mocking ghost of that final smile.


	28. Within Sight

“Blake —” Jenna caught at his arm. She looked as unutterably weary as he felt. They had been ploughing along the side of the valley for what seemed like half a lifetime, the four of them strung out in a straggling line between drifts, save for the increasingly frequent occasions when, as now, they had been forced to turn back to the aid of one of their number. For the first few minutes they had been guided and urged on by the sounds of the assault in the pass ahead, carried down to them in snatches by the wind; but it was too long now since they had heard anything at all. The rebel attack must be over, whether successful or finally driven off. Either way, the chances of the _Liberator_ party’s arriving in time were rapidly decreasing to zero.

“Blake, there’s no point carrying on like this. We underestimated the conditions down here, that’s all. We don’t have the equipment to deal with deep snow; tensor-field boots, hover sleds, wide-range terrain stabilisers.... We’re just floundering around like novice spacers when the gravity fails. We might as well go back to the ship.”

She glanced past him. “That last fall Avon took was a nasty one. The next time could be worse —”

“I can manage,” Avon told her, tight-lipped, as Gan finished his examination. He lowered the foot to the ground and reluctantly accepted Gan’s help to stand up. Even all Avon’s self-command could not hide a wince as his weight came onto the injured leg. As Jenna said, it had been a bad fall. He had been lucky to escape without a serious sprain. Blake himself ached from head to toe after the constant slipping and struggling with the deep drifts, and the other two had fared no better. In a way the worst of it was that it was so hard to judge their progress.

Jenna had been right about the weather. The snow was falling more and more thickly and it was becoming difficult to catch more than a glimpse of the mountains around them. Blake had long since lost track of the outcrop from which they had started, and he was no longer confident of being able to locate the crawler in the valley below. By now, they must surely almost have skirted the site of the avalanche. Either they had not covered nearly as much distance as he had estimated, or else the visibility was so low that they were in danger of losing their way altogether.

Blake hesitated, and glanced across at Gan, seeking support; but the big man’s face was troubled. “Jenna’s right, Blake. We’re not getting anywhere, and this is just taking too long. No-one’s going to be hanging around in this weather any longer than they have to — it’s probably too late already to catch up with the rebels....” Avon said nothing.

Blake sighed, watching Gan close the medical kit and return it to his belt. He had to admit that the others were probably right. He’d known from the start that the ambush would probably all be over quickly; but he’d counted on being able to teleport down somewhere close enough to locate the attack and arrive there before the rebels left. They’d managed the first — just — but it was becoming increasingly clear that without experience he’d totally underestimated the difficulty of travelling through deep snow. Above all, he hadn’t gambled on an avalanche.

“Well?” Jenna challenged again.

Reluctantly, Blake nodded. “All right. We’ll pull out of here. Maybe the _Liberator_ ’s systems can —” The echoing gunshot from below cut his words abruptly short.

It was a single shot, not the staccato rattle of the weapons Avalon’s group had handled on Fimbuldyr, but still instantly recognisable. He exchanged a look with Jenna, who nodded. “Projectile weapon. Low-tech, low-energy, high-maintenance. Lots of illegals use them....”

Blake was staring down into the valley. For a moment he thought he saw moving black shapes through the swirling snow. That shot had come from somewhere only just ahead of them, he was sure of it. Then the snow parted again, briefly, and this time he definitely saw something; tiny dark figures and a long hard-edged shape that had to be the crawler. Aches and weariness were forgotten at once. He swung round. There was still time. “Come _on_!”

Half a dozen jolting strides later, he almost went sprawling. Reluctantly, he slackened his pace, glancing back. The others were following more cautiously. Avon, teeth clenched, was conspicuously not limping.

He caught the direction of Blake’s glance, and his face hardened, challenging the other man to comment. Blake bit back the instinctive words of concern. Avon could look after himself; he’d always shown a considerable talent for doing so. Right now, another confrontation between them was the last thing Blake needed.

Below them, fine veils of snow drove along the pass, obscuring the lower slopes and almost concealing the mountainside opposite. The marooned crawler and the dark specks of activity around it were hazy glimpses seen through a wavering distortion field. Unconsciously, Blake had already begun to try to hurry again. To be within sight of his goal, and yet to be helpless to act....

* * *

Cally reached out desperately for Rhye’s mind as the troops came for them, trying to warn him, trying to share what she knew and feared, trying at least to give him a chance. He would not want to believe her, any more than Amery had believed her — even now, despite everything, she could sense the uncomprehending denial beneath the battened-down turmoil in the younger telepath’s mind. Cally herself wanted badly to be wrong.

Despite the irony of it all, she wanted to be certain, with the certainty of Amery’s simple faith, that the Federation had come to save the four of them from the wicked rebels and that they were about to be released. She wanted to believe in prisoners and last-minute rescues. She wanted to be reassured that this mission was exactly what it had first seemed — the simple delivery for medical trials of a life-saving new treatment. She did not want the painful cold understanding that Amery and his ideals, Lanuv and her lazy generous friendship, she herself and Rhye had all been tools to be used and discarded in the service of the ambitions of the Federation Supreme Commander; and had now, inevitably, become mere inconvenient witnesses.

The stinging pain of the cuts on her hands and wrists had almost gone now, swallowed by the numbness of the cold that was encroaching on body and mind alike. Behind her back, as if they were still tied, she held both hands clenched tightly together, trying to warm fingers she could barely feel.

Yestukha, the woman who’d bound them, had been efficient without brutality. Tangling restrictor cuffs on the wrists first, then, once they were sitting down and leaning back against the crawler’s bulk, similar restrictors set in place around the legs. Finally, and almost apologetically, the immobilising gags. Behind the slewed crawler where she had left them, the prisoners were at least sheltered for the first time from the biting wind, even if the icy surface of the vehicle’s outer hull had after a while begun to make itself felt between Cally’s shoulder-blades as an aching patch of cold. No, it was really not Yestukha’s fault that long minutes later, after she had left, after the last of the cargo had been cleared, after snatches of frightened, angry voices and of one that was all too familiar had begun to drift down with each gust of snow, the wrist bindings on one of her prisoners had been strained until they were tight almost beyond bearing.

It had taken every ounce of will-power Cally possessed to keep working until the long blade Lanuv had given her finally slid free. The standard tangle fibres in the cuffs the rebels used gripped tightly but firmly — until the prisoner attempted to stretch them in any way. Movement resulted only in further constriction. The more you struggled, the more tightly you were held. Cally had deliberately ignored the warning signs. The threads holding the blade had snapped easily enough, as Lanuv had intended, but it took half an eternity of twisting and rubbing, of sweat-stinging cuts and gouges, before Cally had worn a ragged slit down the sleeve of her jacket large enough for the whole width of the knife to slip through. By that time, the steely grip of the restrictor cuffs had passed from torment to an all-consuming agony.

//Why?// Amery. twisting awkwardly round, held the knife angled out between his own bound hands as she had told him. //Why are you doing this to yourself?// The biting strands slackened their grip one by one under Amery’s inexpert manipulation. She could feel him struggling to hold the blade steady as the pain spilled over from her mind into his.

//Why hurt yourself like this? We’re safe now. As soon as Lanuv remembers us, they’ll come and set us free — // The knife slipped again, and he caught his breath. //Oh, my Cally, your hands — your poor hands — //

She had no right to shrink from the helpless, half-voiced endearments with which he tried to enfold her, she told herself fiercely. Her shields were far stronger than his. If she had set herself to do so from the beginning, she could have blocked almost all knowledge of the pain from him. But she had needed to convince him of her own desperation; she had consciously sought to manipulate him through his feelings for her. Her own duplicity sickened her.

The circle of hot agony around one wrist suddenly slackened, and she felt her numb arm swing free. A moment later the final fibres in the other cuff parted. Almost disbelieving, she brought both wrists round from behind her back, wincing at the sight. One hand still trailed the ragged remains of the contracted tangle of coils that had bound her, slick now with her own blood.

For a long moment, she had let herself slump back against the hull of the crawler, head and battered arms hanging limply, gasps of air through the gag harsh in her throat. Numbness beckoned; sleep.... Then a single mocking, cruel phrase came floating down the wind — Servalan’s voice, pitched to carry — and swiftly after it, the sound of a gun-blast and the hot scent of death.

Lanuv? Cally’s heart twisted. She clawed herself upright, flexing nerveless swollen fingers. The cold had almost taken her; it was a deadly enemy in its own right.... Her hands were clumsy, but she forced them to her will. Her grip closed around the handle of the knife in the snow where Amery had let it fall.

//Give me your hands — no, turn round again — I’m going to cut you loose....// His bonds were still slack; easy enough to cut. Even now when it seemed to take both her hands simply to hold the knife steady, it was still — just — possible. She worked feverishly, every sense stretched for the sounds of Servalan’s approach, trying to guess how much time they might have left.

//Listen to me. The Supreme Commander is here in person, here on private business where she should not be — // A guess, that, from what she’d overheard, but one that rang all too true. //Lanuv was wrong. It was not Yakostonok that betrayed us — //

Amery’s mind beat against hers in a blind disbelief that was beginning to swell into panic. //Stay still!// Cally overrode him with a touch of compulsion, herself made ruthless now by urgent fear. //Whatever else you may believe of her, I _know_ the Supreme Commander, I know her voice and face, and she knows me. We have met before, Amery. Now do you see?//

Despite everything, it was less than six short weeks, as humans reckoned such things, since she had faced Servalan across the stones of Aristo. It was not a voice that could be forgotten easily; not when you had steeled yourself once already to the knowledge that the last thing you would ever hear would be that same voice giving the command for your death. Nor did she think that Servalan, baulked of her prize in the moment of victory itself, would yet have forgotten the faces of any of those present — not even that of Cally of Auron.

//Are you certain — ?//

//Certain!// As certain of it as she was that the Supreme Commander was quite capable of ordering all three of them disposed of without any idea of their identity, simply because they might know too much; but Amery would not believe that of any Federation officer, let alone its Supreme Commander. If he thought Cally herself endangered by her rebel past, then he might act....

With a final jerk, the left-hand cuff yielded to her frantic two-handed sawing, swinging loose to dangle around his other wrist. She dared not spare the time to cut it free. He had the use of both hands now — that was enough. It would have to be.

The knife almost slipped from her hold as she reached forward, made clumsy by haste and cold, to begin work on the bonds that held her feet, and Amery caught at her hands, imprisoning them within his own. //Let me — it will be quicker — //

She allowed his swift fingers to prise hers loose, relinquishing her grip on the weapon. One hand was held captive a moment longer. The shy brush of the curve of his cheek against her ravaged wrist took her by surprise.

Cally froze, staring down almost helplessly at the young man’s studiously-averted dark head, bent now over his task. The back of his neck had flushed scarlet. Better — better for both of them — to pretend she had not understood.... Then, abruptly, none of it mattered any more.

“...very little time, Burton!” Servalan’s voice, close and coming closer. “The rebels were using foot-skis, they could be here within minutes. Immediately the other three are disposed of, we leave.” And footsteps; the heavy tread of an approaching squad. Whatever slim chance of escape any of them might once have had, it was about to run out.

Cally struggled to her feet, looking around a little wildly for shelter. Any hiding-place would do, anywhere at all, if it could just hold Servalan off for a few minutes more. Her limbs were cramped and numb, and her own clumsiness frightened her; but better to risk freezing to death in the mountains, if it came to that, than to sit here like trussed cargo waiting to be ‘disposed of’.

Behind her, the towering metal cliff of the crawler’s brown hull cut off all escape. The world was bounded by tumbled masses of dirty snow, loose and unstable where they blocked the valley ahead, rammed high and spilling over by the buried forepart of the crawler to her right. Nowhere to hide. No other way out — unless they could somehow make a break for it round the tail of the crawler, fight their way through with only a single blade between them —

It was at that moment, when it was already almost too late, that she had remembered Rhye.

The boy was still sitting cuffed and gagged against the vehicle’s hull where Yestukha had left him, staring straight ahead with wide, unseeing eyes. There was no sign on that pale face that he had even registered his companions’ freedom or the approach of the troops, let alone understood the implications of either.

Amery, crouched halfway to his feet in Cally’s wake, seemed almost equally frozen. He had twisted round to gaze blindly in the direction of Servalan’s voice, the knife that had freed him dangling forgotten from one hand. He’d heard, all right; heard and understood only too well.

//You’ve got to cut Rhye loose!// Cally caught at the young telepath’s shoulder. No response. Her own fingers were numb and stiffened; she could not get the knife from his grasp. There were only seconds left at best before the soldiers would be able to see them, and for her tentative plan to work, all three prisoners had to be back in position by then as if still bound and helpless. It was not much of a plan, but if she was right then it was probably the only chance any of them would get....

But she could not leave Rhye like this. //I need your help — // Her mind sought beyond Amery’s shields, found panic, hope, disbelief, uncomprehending loyalty and the first dawning fear of betrayal. //Come _on_! Listen to me — //

Another glance towards the corner of the crawler as she flung herself down to sit once more on the snow. Still no-one. How could time crawl so slowly when minds raced so fast? Amery was turning to look at her at last, his blue eyes uncertain and bewildered above the useless gag.

//Trust me.// She put all the force into that she could. //It will be all right. We can get out of here — I promise you — // And then there was no more time for words. She opened her mind to him as she had done in the alleys of Blackport, felt the first tentative link accepted and widened her perceptions into his, pulling him down into the deep link so far and so fast as to break every rule of mind-discipline she’d ever been taught on Auron.

This is what you wanted, isn’t it? This is the intimacy you’ve been pressing for since we left Morcan. Take it then —

She could not hide that thought from him. Nothing could be hidden any more. Neither of them existed. There was only _AmeryandCally_ , one mind in two bodies, sharing everything they knew/felt/believed/remembered....

Truly to see oneself through the eyes of another is a gift humans only ever dream of. For telepaths, it can be a reality. Perhaps that is why to them it is not seen as a gift, but as a terror to be endured.

Time stopped. There was only an endless moment, moving at the speed of thought, during which there could be neither shame nor anger, neither apology nor regret, only acceptance of what was thought or planned by one’s other self — or else disintegration. It was forbidden to compel a link. It was forbidden to force a link in haste. Above all, it was forbidden to bind a lasting deep-link on such a level when there was a possibility of imminent physical danger on either side. Cally had chosen to risk all three.

But the bond held; and so did the minds that formed it. Sensation returned, and with it, awareness, of herself and of the other. She was Cally now, and yet she was still Amery with the knife-hilt in her hand, coarse shirt shifting against her ribs with every breath he took... Knowledge filled her mind, and skills she had never known. For the first time she grasped the true potential of the Soteros Project, the implications of success and the unthinkability of using such an advance as a pawn of war; but at the same time some parallel part of herself was marvelling at the intricate balance of well-trained muscles, at new understanding of electronic logic and of the knife in his hand, both as tool and as weapon.

Cally swallowed hard, fighting down an insane grin at the unexpected intoxication of it all with the sobering knowledge in hindsight — too late now — of just what kind of risk she had taken for both of them. She sought for Amery inside/surrounding her own awareness and felt him likewise pulling back a little to a more certain sense of identity. They had both been shaken by the over-intimate glimpse into the mind of the other, and unwanted knowledge was stark within him; but overlying the turmoil was the same reckless exhilaration that filled her own senses.

From unity comes strength; and for each of them it was like discovering an extra hand — a prehensile limb — no, more than that, and yet more natural.... They were linked, linked into a single whole that was more complete than any one mind alone could ever be, a teamed unit that combined their strength, awareness, agility and all the knowledge and training that either of them had ever gained. A wild illusion of power rushed across her. Together, they could bestride the universe —

//No wonder they prefer you to do this under supervision.// She caught that thought from Amery, together with a trace of rueful laughter, and clung to it gratefully, clawing back her sense of proportion.

A fresh gasp of freezing air hit the back of her throat, reminding her with a jolt of the outside world and its urgent demands. Barely a moment had passed, she registered almost with disbelief. The stormy eternity the two of them had just endured had lasted no longer than the rippling pulse of a single heartbeat.

But there was no more need for words between them. It was Cally’s fierce determination that carried them both now, fear and doubt not forgotten but for the moment thrust down. Amery’s swift fingers were working on Rhye’s bonds even as Cally kept watch, her own numb hands clenched tight in an attempt at warmth. She could feel the tough tangle-fibres parting under the blade; but the boy just sat there unresponding, following Amery’s efforts with the dull eyes of one who had fled inwards, away from capture and aching cold and random violence he could not understand.....

And the troops came for them. Not the black-clad Federation unit she’d somehow been expecting, but pale, dark-haired, mustachioed men in an unfamiliar hooded uniform of faded blue and grey that echoed the colours she’d last seen on the security guards at Yakostonok port. For a moment, Amery’s wild hope sprang up within her: that she had been wrong —

She glimpsed, through the falling flakes, the two who followed. A tall soldier, bare-headed, his bright hair frosted with snow, and at his side a woman poised and hooded in blue and grey. It was her companion’s ill-fitting uniform coat that she wore, and it dragged at her heels, half-shrouding her in its bulk; yet she bore its heavy folds gracefully, as if they were the robes of a queen. By that commanding elegance alone one might have known her — even had Servalan’s been a face that one might easily forget.

Cally could hardly believe that the shock of recognition was not mutual. Shrinking back, she let her shoulders slump as she sat, head bowed — just one more drab tech, a huddled prisoner unworthy of the Supreme Commander’s notice.... Behind the shelter of the mask-like gag she was reaching out for Rhye with increasing desperation, using all the strength of the two telepaths’ joined minds. Whether the boy was truly telepathically blocked or just too frozen to react, she could not tell. She did not think he could hear her; and it was too late now. There was nothing more she could do.

The Supreme Commander’s gaze swept across the three prisoners in turn, swiftly assessing and dismissing each. She glanced up. “See to it, Burton.”

Cally watched as the fair-haired man in his turn picked out three of his patrol with a glance and a jerk of his head in the direction of the prisoners. Weapons were raised and aimed. Through Amery’s eyes she caught a glimpse of the settings on the nearest: a full, lethal, energy discharge.... A strange calm had possessed her. It was no more, after all, than she had feared and expected. The world had narrowed down, as it did when in battle, to the bare slender bridge of survival. Hurt and regret would come later — if ‘later’ ever came.

She braced herself against the cold hull behind her, ready for the sudden tumbling dive that might win them the precious moments of surprise they needed, schooling Amery’s muscles to do the same. He had the knife, and all the combat knowledge she could give him; her own trained reflexes would have to serve her as weapon enough. The crawler’s bulk would be their sanctuary if they could reach the open cargo bay in time. Of Rhye she would not let herself think.

Hands tightened on weapon-grips, awaiting the final order. Cally tensed.

// _Supreme Commander, wait_ — // Amery’s horrified disbelief finally boiled over before she could prevent it. The force of the broadcast shook them all. //There must be some mistake! We come from a Federation ship — we were ambushed and captured by the rebels, that was all. Commander Chu of the _Gergovia_ can confirm our identity — //

The Supreme Commander had turned away. Now she swung round again, looking closely at the prisoners, and Amery sat forward hastily, blue eyes wide and vehement, to draw her attention away from the others.

But the gaze which met his bore no shadow of anything but amusement. “Ah yes, the Auron telepath. Amery, I believe? As you see, Commander Chu has already told me all about you. Dr Andorf, too. In fact it was Dr Andorf who advised me that you had outlived your usefulness.”

Memory supplied an image of the man Andorf: a grey-haired human, reserved in manner but fair-minded, an august figure — in Amery’s perceptions at least, almost revered. Servalan’s smile widened slightly at the young man’s evident distress.

“Oh, he didn’t put it that crudely, of course. I believe the expression used was ‘cut our losses where this young man is concerned’.... It’s quite simple. I gather you were inspired, for some reason, to undertake some research on your own account on the samples being shipped and then, having discovered the presence of the narcotic which I had ordered introduced, unwisely to communicate your suspicions to your superior. Dr Andorf, of course, very properly, reported the entire unfortunate incident.” She was watching him with apparent enjoyment from within the wide hood, her head tilted slightly to one side.

“You see, once you had so kindly made the Federation a gift of what you knew of your planet’s genetic technology, you had really ceased to be of any use to us. Your only remaining potential value lay in the genuine conviction of your remarkably idealistic beliefs; so for you, my dear, I’m afraid the first signs of disillusionment were quite literally to prove fatal.” Her eyes were lowered for a moment in a parody of regret. ”Welcome to reality, Auron.“

Servalan gave a brilliant smile up at Burton from beneath long lashes; and Cally was suddenly certain of the next words, even before they were spoken. “Kill them all.”

//Now!// In the instant before the first shot was triggered, Cally flung herself to one side, forcing cramped limbs to uncoil into a desperate diving roll that the troops could not possibly have anticipated. Amery had moved in the same breath, almost without thought, the hurt and betrayal and blind grief that were spilling over into her own mind all channelled into the instinctive release of action. For a fatal moment Cally failed to understand.

Amery, no — no.... Frozen snow scraped her cheek as she rolled, but she barely felt it. He had not dived for safety. Instead, he had launched himself forwards on a hopeless impulse, directly at Servalan herself.

The woman was recoiling from him now, the exquisite, hateful smile finally wiped from her face. One hand was fumbling inside the heavy folds of her coat for a weapon, but new-learned instincts told him that she would not make it in time. The knife felt natural in his hand, almost relaxed, a living extension to his arm. All around her, gun-muzzles were coming up to meet him — but he was close, so close —

Searing oblivion from all sides tore screaming at Cally’s senses. For a moment, she understood; and then even that was gone, burned away into disintegration with the other half of her mind — her very self — Awareness was flying apart, but instinctively still she fought. She was struggling on the very edge of the maelstrom that was bearing her down, down... and in the moment before she was utterly engulfed, she knew it to be Death.


	29. The Uninvited

Left to his own devices on the flight deck, Vila shifted uneasily on his seat. Having the whole of the _Liberator_ to himself had seemed like a good idea at the time, particularly when the alternative on offer was teleporting down to try to interfere in the middle of a fire-fight, most likely with stray shots flying right, left and centre. There were plenty of areas on the ship he’d never really had the chance to get a decent look at; the recessed storage trays in Jenna’s cabin, for instance. He’d always appreciated women with good taste in jewellery — come to that, he’d always appreciated good jewellery — but somehow, Jenna just didn’t seem to take abstract admiration in the spirit in which it was intended.

He hadn’t counted on having to spend the whole time hanging around on the flight deck because there was no-one else left to keep watch, and with only Zen and Orac for company, which was as good as to say no company at all. He had not the slightest idea how either computer worked, nor any particular desire to find out, but one thing was for certain: when it came to a bit of friendly banter when you were feeling nervous, machines were a total dead loss. He’d even tried to work up an argument with Orac after a bit, just to break the silence, but the little computer had merely declared rational discussion to be impossible in the face of baseless assertions and retreated into what looked suspiciously like an electronic sulk.

Somehow, knowing that there was no-one else on board made the whole ship feel different. Creepy, even. Vila had always prided himself on being able to fit in anywhere — reformatory, transit cell or cutthroat backstreet slum, it made no odds; just work out who was in charge and make sure you made yourself useful enough to get a share in any favours that might be going — and up to now he’d carefully managed to forget just how jumpy the vast empty size of the _Liberator_ had made him, the first few days he’d been on board.

The colony ships had been going out from Earth for centuries, but no matter how great the numbers of colonists, willing or unwilling, who went with them, it could never be enough to make a difference to the teeming masses crowded into the Domes that they left behind. Even Alpha-grade families were lucky to rate more than a four- or five-room apartment; any rating official who ventured as far as the crowded, communal Delta quarters would have been hard put to it to work out where one family ended and the next began. Vila for one had never been clear, even at the time, which, if any, of the score or so of ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ who’d been around when he was small had been his real parents.

He’d lived all his life in the safety of a crowd, occasionally friendly, sometimes hostile, but most often plain indifferent. It didn’t do to stand out. Better to be small and quick-fingered, swift to blend in when trouble caught up with you. Even out on the streets at night, one more lone shadow slipping from hallway to passage in search of what he could find, he’d been aware of the city’s countless millions all around him. Sleeping or waking, stacked together like packed protein slabs, separated only by a few flimsy partitions and panels, blank-faced and avoiding eye-contact in the Dome’s thronging travel arteries, the crowds were always there — not exactly a comforting presence, more a normality you stopped taking for granted only when it was abruptly withdrawn.

On board the _London_ , and come to that on Cygnus Alpha, in the transit cell on Earth and in every other penal institution he’d ever sampled, the prisoners had been kept all together in familiar cramped quarters. The lack of privacy hadn’t worried Vila any more than it had most of the other prisoners — in fact to be honest it hadn’t even crossed his mind until Blake had started trying to come up with escape plans and they’d all had to try to keep things quiet. In Vila’s experience, doors and locks were inconveniences put up by others to keep you out. Amongst the service grades people ate, slept, washed, loved, quarrelled and made up in public. Bring back a good haul one morning from some neat job you’d pulled overnight, and the whole block would know about it by nightfall — and you’d better have a good hiding-place or a tough gang to back you up if you planned to hang onto any of it for more than an hour or two after that. That was just life, as he’d always accepted it.

On the _Liberator_ things were different. Better, mostly — he’d known how to take care of himself on Earth all right, and despite that a lot of the time he’d barely been scraping a living — but definitely different.

There were a couple of dozen sleeping cabins alone, for a start — a whole cabin just to sleep in! — and another three or four communal crew-rooms, as well as the flight deck, the various holds, and an apparently endless selection of areas giving access to various vital parts of the ship’s internal workings and a maze of passageways connecting them all. Blake and his handful rattled around inside a ship this size like bolts in a bucket. For the first couple of nights, curled up alone on his bunk in an empty cabin without even the reassuring sound of his neighbours’ breathing from near by, he’d had nightmare visions of the whole vast empty structure crumpling in on itself around him without a normal weight of human life to fill it.

It was surprising what you could get used to, though. Most of the time there was someone on the flight deck if you wanted company, and of the rest of the crew only Avon or Cally were likely to wander outside the general living area....

Vila frowned unhappily, wondering yet again just what had become of Cally. She’d taken the trouble to learn a good deal about the _Liberator_ ’s systems; if the Federation got hold of that knowledge, things could get pretty sticky for the rest of them. Not that he wasn’t worried about what the Federation might decide to do to Cally to get the details out of her, he told himself hastily — right now he wasn’t even going to think about the other possibility — but... well, there was no getting away from it; losing Cally was bad news for everyone left behind.

It wasn’t as if there had been that many of them to start off with. Daft really, if you stopped to think about it, setting off to topple the Federation with one ship and a crew of half a dozen. The funny thing was, Blake seemed to think there was a real chance of pulling it off, and somehow he’d managed to get all the rest of them into it along after him. The whole thing was crazy and they all knew it, but it was like a slingshot ride — once you’d started there was no way off. You had to keep going, ride the momentum you’d got and trust that your pilot knew where he was headed.... And of them all, Vila would have said without question until this last week that it was Cally who had the most faith in what Blake was trying to do.

Himself, he was just along for the ride. It was better than Cygnus Alpha — anything was better than Cygnus Alpha — better than the Delta warrens on Earth, if he was honest, and now and then he supposed you could say it was fun. In a way. When you looked back on it, at a safe distance.

As a thief, he’d never been in the big league, back on Earth. You needed connections and an off-planet network if you were going to play with the big boys, in crime as in anything else, and he’d always been careful to keep a low profile. The jobs he’d pulled for Blake had been a real chance to show his talent — and at least on the _Liberator_ you knew where your next meal was coming from. Food in your belly, a shirt on your back, a warm bed at night, and fame across the galaxy thrown into the bargain: a man could do a lot worse for himself, in Vila’s scheme of things.

But Cally... he’d have sworn blind that Cally took it all as seriously as Blake did. He couldn’t have been that wrong about her. It didn’t make sense. He’d panicked, back in Blackport, that was all. Anyone would have panicked, with that pale-eyed Auron of hers staring them down as if they were something that had just crawled out of a duct.

Whatever it was Cally had been on the trail of, down in the Jolly Juggler, whatever reason she’d had for taking that obnoxious character along with her, she must have been planning to let the rest of them know. Which meant something had gone wrong. Which meant she was out there somewhere, lost, hurt maybe — and Blake wasn’t even trying to look for her. Instead he’d gone swanning off down to a nice solid planet and left Vila up here alone on an empty ship and getting jumpier by the minute.

After all, it was only three or four weeks since they’d had those awful android Alta things prowling round the ship without anyone knowing, just as if it was theirs, and jumping out at people who were on their own. The Altas had the teleport, didn’t they? Who was to say they couldn’t have teleported someone on board again at the last minute while everyone on the _Liberator_ was distracted by the ship chasing them, just the way it had happened the first time? They could have been hiding out among the empty cabins ever since, just waiting for a chance like this.

For a moment he almost believed it himself. He glanced around nervously again, sweating. He needed a drink. He needed a drink badly. He’d actually been on his way to get one when Avon had called — typical of Avon — and given his luck, the moment he tried to leave the flight deck the same thing was bound to happen again.

It was a lot of responsibility, of course, being left up here in charge of the _Liberator_. Obviously Blake trusted his judgement — he was relying on him, Vila, to keep the whole ship safe as well as to teleport the rest of them back in a hurry if necessary. In fact, perhaps he really ought to go down to the teleport bay and check that everything was still working. It wouldn’t be much of a detour just to nip into his cabin along the way and see if there was anything left in the bottom of that bottle he’d been keeping.... But Blake had been very specific about staying on the flight deck. Right now Vila wasn’t altogether sure he fancied the idea of going down to the cabins in any case; not with all those empty passageways waiting. Instead he slid down from his place, with a sigh, to go and check the detector readings again.

What was he supposed to do if something did show up on the scanners. anyway? Bring Jenna back up? Tell Zen to deal with it? If he’d been taking his normal watch and something unexpected came up, he’d have yelled out for some help from one of the others like a shot; it wasn’t that he couldn’t cope, mind, just that he’d always believed in being careful. If Blake was expecting —

The familiar warmth of indignation drained out of him abruptly as he caught sight of the forward sensor display. Vila swallowed, hard.

The _Liberator_ was supposed to be shielded from the Federation flotilla by the bulk of the planet. Whatever it was out ahead of them in a parallel orbit, he’d give long odds it hadn’t been over there when they arrived — Jenna wouldn’t have missed a warning sign like that, not in a thousand years. What was more, judging by the way that blip was hanging around just beyond the fringes of visual detector range, it looked suspiciously like a ship, and a ship that was shadowing their position and didn’t want to be seen. Lurking, in fact.

“Zen!” Vila’s voice cracked in panic. Why hadn’t one of the computers warned him? “Zen, is the rest of the Federation fleet — no, wait a minute —” Any ships still behind the planet were as hidden from the _Liberator_ as she was from them. But he’d just had an idea.

“Orac —” He caught hold of the edges of Orac’s casing, leaning over as if he planned to shake some co-operation out of the self-important box of tricks. ”Orac, you can read other computers, right? Any computer? So you can detect ships?“

“That is a gross over-simplification of what is merely a side-effect of my primary functioning —”

“Listen, Orac, this is important. Is the rest of the Federation fleet on its way yet? How much time have we got?”

There was a moment’s whirring. “It is almost impossible to give a meaningful response to a question phrased in such an imprecise manner. If by ‘Federation fleet’ you refer only to those vessels currently in orbit around Insecution —”

“ _Orac_!” Vila was almost dancing on the spot.

“— _if_ , as I say, you refer to the local Federation presence,” the computer continued remorselessly, “I must conclude that you are acting under a misapprehension. A survey of the databanks of the vessels in question confirms that they remain ignorant of the _Liberator_ ’s presence in orbit and that none of them has left station. Furthermore, if the _Liberator_ ’s presence had in fact been detected you would already have been notified of the situation, since Blake left specific instructions that I was to inform you of such an occurrence with the highest priority —”

“Conveniently forgetting to let me know, I suppose,” Vila put in under his breath.

“Evidently. A typical example of human inefficiency. May I point out that my circuits were not designed to perform the primitive function of a monitoring device —”

“Hang on.” Vila was scowling. He let go of Orac’s casing, straightening up as he turned. “Zen, is that a ship out there in front of us or isn’t it?”

“IDENTITY CONFIRMED.” Zen told him calmly. “FULL SENSOR ANALYSIS INDICATES EIGHTY-SEVEN POINT TWO PERCENT PROBABILITY —”

“All right then, Orac —” Vila swung back — “if the Federation doesn’t know we’re here....” He stabbed an indignant finger in what he imagined to be the direction of the front of the ship. ”What’s _that_?“

“It is a non-Federation vessel, of course.” Somehow Orac managed to sound even more smug than usual. “Since the sensor profile is too large to correspond even to a _Pioneer_ -class modified pursuit ship, and far too small for a light or scientific cruiser, let alone the command cruiser _Amritsar_ , it should have been obvious to you at once that this ship could not be part of the observed Federation flotilla —”

“Look, I don’t care what it isn’t,” Vila interrupted through clenched teeth. “Just tell me what it is!” But his immediate panic had subsided. After all, so far their mysterious neighbour didn’t seem to be _doing_ anything.

He jumped as Zen spoke again from behind him. “THE SHIP IS A MEDIUM-RANGE INTERSTELLAR VESSEL OF A MODIFIED DESIGN LOCAL TO SEVERAL SYSTEMS IN THIS SECTOR, OPERATING UNDER FULL STEALTH MODE WITH IDENTITY BEACON DISABLED. HOWEVER, COMPARISON WITH DATA HELD IN MEMORY BANKS SUGGESTS WITH EIGHTY-SEVEN POINT TWO PERCENT PROBABILITY THAT IT IS IDENTICAL WITH THE UNREGISTERED CRAFT _ONORA_ LAST KNOWN TO BE ON COURSE FOR INSECUTION APPROXIMATELY ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT HOURS AGO.”

“Does it?” Belatedly, light dawned. “Oh, you mean the _Onora_... the ship we wasted all that time following out of Blackport?” He thought about it. “Makes sense, I suppose. After all, the _Liberator_ took the scenic route; the _Onora_ probably got here days ago. I wonder who they are and what they’re up to? Hiding from the Federation, like us, by the looks of it. Perhaps they’re some more of Jenna’s friends — a bit friendlier than the last lot, I hope.” If Jenna hadn’t managed to track down that Amagon collar-release inducer on one of the dead bodies for him, he’d have been stuck with an explosive collar round his neck for the rest of his (probably short) life. It had been all very well for the others, with Vila to do the dirty work for them; but he’d like to know how even a genius was supposed to pick a booby-trapped lock on the back of his own neck.

“Here — they’re _not_ Amagons, are they?” he demanded of Orac, somewhat nervously.

“The question is trivial —”

“Not to me, it isn’t!”

“You would do better to apply your attention —”

Orac’s voice died in a protesting whine as Vila made a grab for the activator key.

“A fat lot of use you are,” Vila told the silenced computer. “I bet you couldn’t give a straight answer to a straight question if you had the two ends of a straight line laid out with a laser in front of you....”

He weighed the fragile sliver of electronics in his hand longingly; but chucking Orac’s key across the flight deck now would only mean grovelling under a console for it again later. Instead he aimed a kick at the side of the table, stubbed a toe, dropped the key and hopped in agony, groaning and clutching one leg, and cursing impartially Ensor, Orac, and anyone stupid enough to put a price-tag of a hundred million on a machine that only worked when it felt like it.

He could have spared himself the trouble. When he finally limped back over to check on the sensors, the _Onora_ was still there, still drifting in an orbit almost but not quite parallel to that of the _Liberator_ , and still taking no action whatsoever, whether defensive or threatening. Vila’s initial attempt at communicator contact was met with a reply polite but curtly dismissive. The response to his second attempt was neither so long nor so polite. Subsequent calls elicited only a final savage admonition to “shut your trap before you have the Federation down on the both of us.” Whatever business the _Onora_ might have down there on Insecution, it was of a kind she preferred to keep to herself.

* * *

The snow fell steadily now, veiling the air with soft, slow flakes that had already begun to blur the traces of violence on the ground. Billowing gusts of it drove down the pass between the high slopes, swirling along the roof of the half-buried crawler and up across the mounded débris of the avalanche beyond with an urgency that raised eddies even in the sheltered space between. A cold flurry of wind-driven crystals sifted free down the vehicle’s angled hull, gathering speed to fall in an icy spray across the remains of the young man who lay there. In the moment that the Supreme Commander stood watching, a second and then a third flurry followed, a ghostly-pale feathering against the charred mask that lay beneath. The Auron was dead. Burton’s men had made very sure — belatedly — of that.

She glanced up briefly to check that the bodies of the other two — the female tech who’d tried to make a break for it and the boy — were being shifted according to the orders she had given. Then she turned her attention to Burton.

“That should never have been allowed to happen.” Servalan’s voice was icy. She stooped swiftly to the ground and plucked the knife free from the young Auron’s slack fingers. The outstretched hand was barely an arm’s-length from where she had stood.

She held the long blade up in front of her subordinate’s eyes. “The incompetence of your men put my life at risk!” The cold rage of reaction was filling her, sweeping aside all his protestations. Burton’s uniform coat around her had begun to fall open again. She pulled it savagely tight. “It was your responsibility to check —”

“Sir — ma’am —”

Servalan swung round, ready to discharge her fury on whoever had dared interrupt her. The soldier, hood thrust back, was glancing uncertainly between the high-ranking Federation commander and his own superior officer, obviously unsure as to whom he should report. Wisely, he reached the correct decision. “Ma’am, we’re ready to move out.”

Already Servalan’s anger had been replaced by cold calculation. These men were ciphers, all of them, their rôle played out, even Burton. The planes of the Leading-Patroller’s face were blurred by a sort of resentful bewilderment, as if he had grasped almost too late that events were slipping beyond his control. It would be folly to waste any more time here.

She spared a final glance for the remaining corpse. There could be no doubt that the young scientist’s body would hardly serve now for the tableau she had had in mind. Unfortunate, to say the least, that the panicked salvo from the Insecution troops had been so very thorough.... It was to be hoped that, given the worsening weather, and the demoralising shock of the loss of their leader, the rag-tag remainder of Varro’s little band would be reluctant to spend long enough down here to discover the truth. Meanwhile it was becoming imperative to evacuate the area before the rebels could return.

She caught Burton’s eye. “Get _that_ —” a pointed look at the Auron’s remains —”covered up. I want all indications that might lead to the observation module and all signs of our presence here removed. The rest of the men are to set out for the troop carrier at once. And have Commander Venn meet me before he leaves. I shall have some very specific orders for him.”

She lingered long enough to watch the first loads of loose snow cast without ceremony over the young man’s crumpled form; then, drawing the heavy hood more closely about her face, in her turn she made her way round past the end of the crawler out into the open pass. It was time to ensure that the rest of her orders had been carried out.

The full force of the rising gale struck her like the backwash from a broad-focus stunner beam. For a moment she was barely able to keep her footing. It could be little more than five minutes, ten at the outside, since she had crouched there in the snow beside Varro, watching the last shreds of his life ebb away; but in those minutes, masked from her by the shelter of the crawler’s bulk, the wind had grown teeth — and teeth of ice.

The thickening snow added a new edge to her disquiet. She glanced across the scene, eyes narrowed, trying to gauge what remained to be done. There was only one soldier still in sight, a dimly-glimpsed outline bent over one of the bodies. She watched him straighten up briefly, then bend to his task again, her lips tightening as urgency betrayed her into a stumbling run.

“Leave that!” She caught at the startled man’s arm as he was arranging the female tech into an artistic sprawl in the churned snow a few steps from Varro’s body, forcing him to release the woman’s shoulder. The head fell back limply.

Further up the slope, in the direction of the module, Servalan caught sight of a shape that must be Venn approaching, an all-too-solid grey-blue ghost. A larger group just coming around the tail of the crawler was the working party she had left there. There was nothing more to wait for.

The soldier beside her was scrambling to his feet, trying to pull himself to a semblance of attention. She cut him short with a single gesture. “We pull out. Now. Before the...”

The Supreme Commander’s voice died abruptly. For a moment she stood frozen, exquisite features distorted into a caricature of shock, staring downwards; then she dropped to one knee in the snow beside the corpse, heedless of the stares of her companion. Gloved fingers were hooked brutally into cropped brown curls, dragging the tech’s face up to within twelve inches of Servalan’s own. But there was no mistake. She had not truly thought there could be. Naked now of the immobilising mask, the slack white features of the tech Istan were those of Cally of Auron.

“Blake....” She was hardly aware that she had spoken aloud. Report — and Travis — had claimed Blake to be in the Second Sector. Only too clearly, report had lied.

She had hoped, in time, to use her tame Auron and his ideals to decoy the woman Cally, and through her, Blake. It had been no more than the germ of an idea, discarded on Andorf’s word almost without regret. Now it seemed her bait had after all been taken with a vengeance — without her knowledge, and at a time she most certainly would not have desired. Dr Andorf should never have permitted Amery to leave the Central Science Complex. If Cally, as ‘Istan’, had somehow been planted on board that ship....

She let the woman’s head fall, roughly, staring down at the crumpled figure of the alien with a sudden fierce suspicion. _This_ Auron, at least, bore no visible injuries.... Stripping off her own glove, Servalan pressed ruthless fingers first against the side of Cally’s neck, then, as she took in with distaste the state of the woman’s wrists, against the soft skin above one elbow that showed pale through the tattered sleeve. Chilled flesh yielded, waxen, beneath her nails. There was no trace of a pulse.

For a moment Servalan frowned, eyes darkening with the memory of Aristo; then, tight-lipped, she caught up the long knife from her gloved hand and struck. At the last minute she changed her aim.

The blade jarred against bone, sank deeper, obliterating the fading imprint of cruel nails. Cally made no sound or resistance.

Servalan wrenched the blade back, almost disappointed. A sluggish trickle of blood ran from the transfixed arm; a brief dark flowering on the snow.

So the woman was dead, after all. Perhaps it was a pity. She could have been useful. But she had carried her imposture too far. She had feigned insignificance, and had finally paid its price.

There was some reassurance in that, at least. Whatever Blake might have intended — and she knew well enough now at whose door to lay Amery’s inconceivable escape and attack — it could hardly have been this.

The thought brought re-awakened urgency. Servalan rose swiftly to her feet, aware for the first time of the ring of faces watching her uncertainly. Already her ungloved hand was becoming numb with cold. She struggled to pull on the missing glove with clumsy fingers, her eyes sweeping the little group without mercy. “Your orders were to proceed back to the troop carrier. I want this area cleared. Immediately.”

She found Venn at her elbow, a bulky shape in the gusting snow. “Commander, my instructions to you can wait. We move out. Now.”

He was bending down to the Auron’s body. The red face turned up to the Supreme Commander was furrowed in perplexity. “But ma’am... the tech... do you still want....”

“Leave it!” She glanced over her shoulder, half-expecting to see rebels materialising out of the blizzard at any minute. Cally’s still face, blind and accusing, was turned up to the empty sky. Servalan thrust a contemptuous boot beneath the limp shoulders, rolling the woman over roughly to lie face-down in a graceless grey sprawl.

Venn was still hovering. “Ma’am — your locator beam —” She took the belt unit from him as she passed, without a word. Already the other soldiers were almost out of sight.

Servalan turned the locator in her hand, feeling the welcome vibration that signalled the relay beam leading to the troop carrier, then clipped it on her belt. Snow had gathered in the frozen folds of her hood, and she shook it free. Behind her, she could hear Venn puffing at her heels. She increased her pace.

“What was the last reported take-off status of the troop carrier?”

“Green... ma’am...”

“Excellent.” For the first time she allowed herself fully to savour the knowledge of her victory. The Arnya system gained for the Federation would be the bonus. Varro himself had been her prize.

“Venn. Burton and his patrol now form a security risk. I trust the arrangements we discussed are still in force....”

Snow blew through the empty pass, cold death on a bitter wind. It blew over three still shapes, arranged in a feigned tableau of struggle; and over the unmarked drift that served as the grave of the hidden fourth. Betrayal blew on the wind, and disbelief, and wasted love. A knife lay discarded on the snow. A few paces away, half-buried, a wide-barrelled gun. Blood welled once again, bright and sluggish, from Cally’s arm. Welled, and soaked away... welled faster and soaked away. She never moved.


	30. Survivors

Time passed... minutes in eternity. Despite the cold, despite all she had endured, her body was young and strong — but her mind knew only death. That final agonised moment of un-making had echoed through the deep-link along twinned senses with a searing finality. She had died, and _known_ it. Mind and body struggled for dominion on a knife-edge of balance, with true death only a fraction away; but something made her cling on. She had fought to the last, always, with or without hope. She could not relinquish life easily now.

Blood flowed, more and more swiftly as she stirred. She was lifted, roughly. There were angry voices: half-coherent phrases flowed over her.

“Wright wouldn’t....”

“Face the facts, Mashka, there’s....”

“...last long out here....”

“...to tell Miriam?...”

“...still breathing, I think....”

“Look here, Semyon....”

“...get it out of her somehow —”

Ungentle hands bit into numb flesh. She was shaken, viciously, her head snapping back. “...Federation scum....” A force band seemed to close about her left arm, and she convulsed.

“So you are awake.” A face swam into focus as Cally fought her way back to a painful awareness. Cold ached through every fibre of her being in a dangerous lethargy that was strangely inviting, drawing her back down into numb sleep where there would be no more pain. No more need to struggle, no more rending telepathic void where a part of her mind had been torn away.... Amery was dead. She had tasted of his death. She could taste it still. Amery, Rhye, Lanuv....

A blow rocked her. Harsh words; a guttural accent. “Answer me, _haarn_ ’s breath!”

She struggled through frozen lips to tell him that she did not understand. Saw the next blow coming. Managed not to flinch.

A protest from somewhere behind her brought only an angry riposte from her interrogator. His face was suddenly very close to her own, weathered, bitter lines set in a snarl half threat, half disgust. “Just how did you do it, _rabochenka_? Four of you and one of him, and he was crazed enough to let you free?”

There were silver threads in the coarse black curls of his beard, framed by a thick hood in ragged layers of fabric that looked somehow familiar. Belatedly, Cally remembered who these people must be, her numbed mind seeking out a name to match the face. Her voice felt rusty with disuse. “Semyon.”

Another jarring blow. “So you can talk. Talk to some purpose, then, why don’t you? Tell us which way they went, the rest of your murdering prisoner spew, after they left you here to rot with the carcase of the man who was worth more to us than half a hundred of your snivelling Federation kind —”

“No....” Cally turned her head from side to side in weak urgency; flung up a shielding forearm as she read the next blow in his face. “No... it was... Federation... were here... killed....”

“Federation scum were here all right —” His fist smashed through her attempted guard, slamming her head back against the snow as he let her fall. ”Two run, two left behind. You didn’t take him down easily, did you, not a man like Wright —”

Snow was falling on her face as she lay, its touch feather-light on bruising flesh. Semyon towered far above her, rising to his full height, an implacable monolith of judgement, unhearing and uncomprehending like the ancient gods.

“— and I’d say it again!” His voice rolled over her, dream-like, directed now in furious response to some comment she had not heard. “Yes, and add ‘conniving cynical off-worlder bastard’ into the bargain! Like him? no — follow him? yes — to the hells and back, and he knew it —”

The voices were receding. Cally struggled to sit up. Her arm would not hold her. Blood on her clothes; blood on the snow, and far too much of it.... The stab of realisation cleared her head momentarily. She reached out as the last of the rebels came past, and caught at a trailing hem of cloth. Her grip slipped; but the woman had stopped, to stare down at her. There was neither patience nor pity to be read in the pinched, dark face.

“Take me with you....” Cally fought for words and arguments that slipped away. “Help me — I will help you all I can —” Snow swirled around the figure above her, veiling any softening of expression. Her bare hands were long since numb and all but useless; she could not even shiver. The snow-cold was creeping up on her again, blurring mind and speech. Left alone here, she had no chance. They both knew it.

“The route we travel, we cannot even carry our dead.” An accent thicker even than she had heard from Semyon, laced with contempt. “We take no prisoners who cannot walk. Death for you will be easy — easier, I think, than you deserve.” And with that she was gone, a dim shape fading into the dusk of the blizzard in the wake of all the rest.

“I’m not with the Federation —” Her voice cracked, and the wind blew the words back in her teeth. ”Listen to me!“ Had one of those dim figures paused? Desperation finally brought Cally the name that might save her; a potent name from the past, a name to conjure with indeed.

“I was with Blake — Blake, of the _Liberator_ — _Blake_ —”

The shifting ghosts in the curtain of snow mocked her. The rebels were gone.

Despair was a luxury she could not afford; not here, not now. Unseen in the blizzard, Cally’s mouth tightened. She struggled up from where she had let herself fall, clawing at the fastenings of her jacket with nerveless fingers. There was shelter to be had, shelter in the crawler if she could only reach it... a slender chance at a few more hours or days at most, little more than a gesture of defiance, but it was a gesture she would make — a bitter twist of humour remained to her — or die trying.

The squat bulk of the crawler showed as a dark shadow of sanctuary in the whirling whiteness that bounded her world. To reach the upper hatch was out of the question; but she was almost certain she could glimpse the cargo bay doors still standing open as she had last seen them, as she had counted on them to be when she had planned that last desperate dash from under the soldiers’ guns.... With those doors closed and locked down behind them, she and Amery might have had a chance to hold off Servalan’s execution squad. They were still her only hope against enemies far more insidious and just as ruthless — the Barrier Mountains and their wind-borne snow.

The cargo bay was perhaps fifty yards away. It might as well have been fifty miles. Teeth set, Cally wrenched at the shoulder of her jacket. She barely noticed the cold as the flap came loose.

Identification records — the discs slipped free from their case as the inner pocket spilled its contents under her clumsy fingers, slipped through her grasp and were gone. The identity wallet itself followed, its slick surface caught by the wind, the remaining items — image, allocations, permits — scattered across soft-fallen snow. Somewhere among them had to be Lanuv’s other gift, the precious little packet of stimulant sprays that just might carry her across the endless yards to shelter.... Half-sobbing with effort, Cally dragged herself forwards across the snow. She had little hope; but against the odds, her questing hand brushed over a soft, square shape.

There was no strength left in her fingers. She fumbled helplessly at the seal, one-handed, dragging it backwards and forwards across the frozen surface until the seam of the packet yielded. The four tubes within seemed impossibly tiny, and the coloured print swam before desperate eyes. No way to choose. She clawed one up at random, breaking it open with her teeth, wedging it against the angle of her jaw to trigger the spray she was too numb to feel. Let herself collapse. Waited for the drug to hit her bloodstream, to give her the strength to go on....

The snow was warm under her cheek, almost soft. Curled up with her back to the wind, she could feel her eyes growing heavy with sleep. It was true after all; it would be an easy death.... No! The knowledge kindled a final flicker of rebellion. If Death was to come, then at least She would not find her quietly waiting!

She thrust herself deliberately over onto her wounded arm, clinging to the pain as it cut through the growing shadows in her mind. The stimulant had helped a little, after all. She thought she could make shift to crawl.

The other three tubes were still scattered by her hand. Lanuv’s remembered warning held her back for a moment; but if by some miracle she came out of this, a week in sickbay would be a price she’d pay willingly. Any of those three sprays had to be stronger than the one she’d used. The combination might just give her a chance.

Perhaps it was the additional stimulant. Perhaps the wind really was slackening. Cally made it almost halfway to the crawler before her arm gave way, pitching her sideways onto her face. She could clearly see the cargo bay, and it was open. There was the start of a drift of snow inside the doors, but she thought they would still close. She told Zelda so, and Zelda smiled. Beside her Ennial smiled too, holding out a hand to help her up. Cally reached for it, but somehow missed. She was flat on the snow again. Teeth set, she dragged herself up and on, towards the crawler. Her sisters followed, encouraging her, supporting and warming her with their concern.

Later — perhaps seconds later, perhaps hours — she was crawling through a great hall, fingers bruising between the cracks of the floor-slates. She was trailing her wounded arm now, the hand scraping limply across the redstone, but somehow there was no pain. The arm no longer seemed to belong to her at all.

At the end of the hall Baldrin was waiting for her, he and Pikel seated behind a low table set for three. There were spiced drinks steaming there, and a dish of Pikel’s stew — but the thought even of the infamous stew, hot and salty, brought water to her mouth. She had not realised she was so hungry.

Baldrin glanced up and saw her. He nudged the smaller man, who jumped up, hurrying down the hall with a warm grin. Baldrin’s own lopsided smile showed, but, more reserved, he remained waiting in his seat. One hand crept up in the old gesture to pull impatiently at his long fair tail of hair.

“I knew you could not be dead!” Cally smiled up at Pikel as he reached her. “This is my sister Ennial, and this is Zelda —”

But her clone-siblings were gone, into the snow, and so was the food, and the stone beneath her knees... and all of Saurian Major. Bitter desolation howled through her. Green insects she could have borne. It would have been less cruel.

Twenty yards to sanctuary, perhaps a little more. The sight of that dark refuge drew her on, stubbornly, to the boundaries of her strength and beyond, inch by crooked inch as the hallucinations returned. At first she knew them for what they were. Later she no longer cared. Those she had lost came to keep her company, the living and the dead alike. Vila conjured for her. Liady tossed her hair back and sang. Once, her mother smiled at her, dark-eyed and far away.

Other, more menacing shadows hovered in the snow, their voices whispering on the wind. She beat them off with strength she could ill afford, crying down their insinuations of blame with defiance of her own. She would not give up. Not for those she had killed; not for those who had abandoned her here.

“The Federation killed him!” she flung back at Semyon. “I would have gone with you — I fought with Blake... with Blake... Blake... Blake....” The name became a mantra, meaningless sound between frozen lips, a talisman to drive off the gathering demons. Dark shapes swam in her blurred vision. There were hands on her, trying to hold her back. She clawed forwards, found the ice-cold metal of the crawler, clung to it....

Her fingers were too numb to hold. The voices were all around her now, loud and harsh. She felt her grip going, felt her body lifted free from the grasp of the snow, and lashed out in a final desperate effort at survival.

“Answer me!” A face very close to her own. Dark curls, touched with snow. She shook her head, denying him. The words would not come. “No, I... Blake....”

“Answer me —” There was a hard grip around her; faint warmth. She felt herself held and shaken. “— Cally —”

Familiar heavy features. Familiar warmth of concern. She tried to put out a hand in disbelief; found his arms solid around her. Warm breath steamed between them. No ghost —

“... _Blake_?”

* * *

Cally looked like hell. Even Jenna was shocked. The face resting against Blake’s shoulder was waxen-pale under the dark snow-matted curls, with ugly bluish shadows beneath the cheek-bones and eyes. Always slender, beside the others in their thermal suits she looked frail enough to blow away, her fine-boned wrists swollen and raw, her right hand a frozen white claw and the left a shapeless dragging mess. Her upper lip and cheek were split and bruised, and one eye half-closed as if from a beating. Her jacket was torn at the shoulder with both sleeves in bloody tatters, one frayed well above the wrist and the other in ribbons to the elbow. The flesh beneath was in little better state. Jenna winced. There was blood down Cally’s left side, great clotted streaks of it everywhere — save, apparently, in her veins. The Auron woman hung in Blake’s clasp like some pitiful bundle of shattered parts being winched out of a wreck.

None of which — Jenna bit her lip — could be allowed to rule out the possibility, the distinct possibility, that Cally had been placed here deliberately by whoever had done this, with an eye to their coming. As bait. Her gun half-drawn, she read the same thought in Avon’s eyes. She jerked her head towards the yawning darkness of the interior of the wrecked vehicle and got a curt nod of agreement. As she began her own wary perimeter circuit, she glanced back and glimpsed Avon slipping cautiously through the open doors.

Gan and Blake were still bent over Cally when she returned. Both of them looked grim.

“Just how bad is she?” Blake demanded.

Gan had stripped off his own thermal suit, inside-out, swaddling Cally in it as if in a cocoon. He had her cradled protectively in his arms, with Blake crowding him close as though trying to infuse some of his own vitality into her by proximity alone. Gan was running some kind of scanner from his belt-pack over her wrists. He barely looked up at the other man’s voice.

“Bad enough. Cold, shock, blood-loss — some kind of stimulant I can’t pin down — the hole in her arm’s none too clean, and her pulse is all over the place — she could lose those fingers, Blake —”

Blake seized on that, fiercely. “Then she’ll live?”

Gan hesitated, and Jenna, watching, caught her own breath. Finally, he nodded. “I think so.” Broad fingers brushed aside tangled dark hair from Cally’s still forehead, drawing the cocoon more closely around her, and Gan’s face hardened into determination. He met Blake’s eyes squarely. “Cally’s tough. She’ll live.”

Jenna took her chance as the tense line of Blake’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “Blake, listen —”

The breakneck pace he’d set down that last stretch of mountainside might just have paid off, after all; and not just on Cally’s account. “There’s no-one here now — but there are tracks all over the place. Fresh ones, and older drag-marks. The last of the rebels can only have left a few minutes ago. You can still make out the trail marking the way they went. If we go now — and I mean this minute — there’s a chance we might be able to catch up with them before everything’s snowed over. Get their attention at least, if they notice us following —”

Coping with the rebels’ attention, once they’d got it, of course, would be another matter. It was more than just tracks she’d found out there in the open pass. It looked to her as if this group was likely to shoot first and ask questions after; but that was none of her affair. If Blake was fool enough to go up there, Jenna would cover his back. It was as simple as that.

“You’re wasting time, Blake.” Avon, unexpectedly, as Blake hesitated with a backward glance.

Avon had seated himself on the lip of the cargo bay after checking it out; now he got up a little stiffly and limped a few steps closer to the others. “You dragged us away from Blackport on a fool’s errand; you’ve risked all our necks down a mountain in a snowstorm; now you can’t even bring yourself to do what you came for. I for one would prefer to see some results to justify all this, Blake. One might almost begin to wonder what became of your concern for the free spirits of Insecution.” The two men’s eyes locked. “If you’re going, then take Jenna’s advice and go. I can take care of anything else that crops up here on my own.”

“With Cally?” There was a tight edge to Blake’s tone that Jenna did not like.

Nor did she care for Avon’s answering smile. “With Cally. And Gan.” He held Blake’s gaze, still smiling. For a moment some acknowledgement seemed to pass between them; then Blake turned away, abruptly.

“Come on, Jenna. It’s worth a try. The snow’s slackening, at least —”

“Save your breath.” Jenna broke into a half-jog, glancing back. She caught his eye and pointed ahead of them and to the left. “They went that way.” Steep smooth snow-fields broken by black-tipped outcrops... the shoulder of the mountain swept up and up to some hidden col or vertiginous pass above, blurred by cloud and distance. She grinned at Blake’s expression.

“Save my breath....” Half-awed, half-appalled. “Even _Vila_ couldn’t save enough breath in a year to get up there!” He frowned suddenly, slackening his pace. “Someone ought to tell Vila about Cally —”

“Avon can take care of that — remember?” She glanced sharply at him, a question on her lips, but bit it back. Here was the place where all the tracks converged, a deep-ploughed trail in the fresh-fallen surface, smoothed over and dimpled now by the wind, but still recognisable. Where the rebels had gone, she and Blake could go too....

* * *

Angry voices. Drifting in and out of reality, Cally let them flow over her. There was too much she did not understand, too much her torn and aching mind was not yet ready to face. The world had changed and changed again, enemies shifting even as she struggled to meet them, and now the wheel had come full circle and she had no strength left for anything but trust. Memory hurt. Reason hurt. She had been hurt too much.... Yet for a moment she swam up into her old awareness, and knew that the deep vibration all around her was Gan’s voice, and the other, bitter-edged, hard, was Avon.

“We were within half a mile. Half a mile, in sixty miles of mountains. To be so close, and to _fail_ —”

A protesting rumble from Gan. “Jenna said there’s still a chance —”

“It would have been a better chance if Blake had contrived to get us here a little earlier. His idea of intervention at the outset of the ambush was foolhardy, but it might have worked. As it is, I can think of few hopes more futile than to attempt to track down a guerrilla group on foot, through thick snow and on its own home ground. Unless, of course, the locals are not content with merely evading pursuit but decide to take pre-emptive action.”

A sharp breath from Gan. “Then Blake and Jenna could be under attack —”

“Precisely. But since it is the only remaining chance I can see for a successful conclusion to the Soteros affair before it is too late, I imagine even Blake is fully aware of that.”

She could feel Gan shifting unhappily. Intuition filled her own mind with a sudden, sickening premonition: Semyon’s face, the face of a man both desperate, and brutal in despair. He would take the bait that Blake was so blithely offering, and take it with savage, survivor’s ruthlessness that would give no quarter. Blake trusted, she remembered painfully from out of a past that seemed a lost paradise of innocence; Blake was prepared to stake his life on trust....

Cold air brushed her throat, the fabric pulling away as Gan’s fingers tightened. “We had to try!” His voice ached with the effort to carry conviction. “Avon, the Federation is cold-bloodedly playing games with those people —”

“Since when have they ever done anything else? If I know the Federation, they’ll have made sure there’s some kind of homing device built into those boxes —” His tone sharpened suddenly, took on speculation. ”If we could tap into that, now —”

“There was a tracer....” Cally barely recognised the thread that was her own voice. “I used it — in Blackport....” From the sound of the in-drawn breath, she guessed that Avon had almost forgotten her presence.

Swift uneven steps on the snow. Above her, a protest from Gan that was cut short. Insistent hands on her shoulders, lifting her, pulling at her — she opened her eyes, struggling to focus.

“What was the frequency?” She glimpsed Avon’s face poised above her, sharp features blazing with bitter intensity. There was a savagery in the low voice she did not understand. “Cally, _what was the tracer frequency_?”

Memory — a black-haired boy in a shadowed cave — a shattered handset — the sound of the sea — Avon’s eyes compelled her, forcing her back, demanding an answer.

“I can’t....” She tried to turn away from those eyes. Weakness betrayed her. “Not —”

Gan’s voice crashed over her, his arms tightening as he swung round, breaking Avon’s grasp. “Avon, is this really necessary?”

“Yes, it’s necessary.” A flat snarl. She could no longer see him.

A flurry of snowflakes touched her face. Beyond Gan’s shoulder she glimpsed mountains.... And somewhere out there, alone, on foot, struggling dark specks on the vast indifference of those half-veiled slopes, were Blake and Jenna, deliberately courting danger. The knowledge tore at her. No more death. She could not bear it.

She turned her head painfully, seeking out Avon. “— not standard... communications....”

And then the questions: swift, technical, relentless, eliciting everything she guessed or knew from those few brief minutes spent working on unknown circuitry by belt-light. She gathered together the rags of her strength to give him the clear, concise answers he needed; fended off Gan as he tried to intervene; and somehow clung to consciousness until she was done. As she finally let herself slip under, she thought she caught a queer look of approval in Avon’s hard eyes.

* * *

“I know what they’ve done to make it work,” Avon said softly, watching the drained white face. “And I think I know how....”

No response from Cally. He had not really expected one. He dismissed her from his thoughts and stepped back, his eyes travelling upwards over Gan’s locked muscles and awkward stance to the man’s face. Gan’s teeth were clenched — probably to prevent them chattering. Avon smiled slightly. Good.

“Without your thermal suit, there is no point in your staying down here any longer,” he told Gan without wasting time on a preamble. Before the big man could protest, he went on smoothly: “I suggest you contact Vila and have him teleport you both back up. Cally needs immediate medical attention and I imagine Vila will be delighted to learn of her somewhat abrupt reappearance — you may even be able to convert his enthusiasm into practical help in the surgical unit, though I doubt it. Once you have Cally stabilised, contact Blake and Jenna and bring them up.”

Gan frowned. “But what about the Soteros? Blake won’t —”

“If I’m right,” Avon said with deliberation, “we should be able to track those transit cases to within a couple of yards — underground or not. Find the cargo and you’ve found the rebels.”

He watched that sink in, as hope mingled with suspicion on the other man’s broad features. “And if you’re wrong?” Gan demanded, as Avon had known he would.

Avon shrugged with ostentatious unconcern. “If I’m wrong... then it’s probably too late already.” He let his tone sharpen, cutting across Gan’s attempted response. “How long before Cally can leave the surgical unit? I can’t complete this without technical help.”

He read the answer in Gan’s eyes, and his mouth tightened. “I see.” It would have to be Blake, then. Ironic, in a way... or perhaps not. After all, his goals here on Insecution and Blake’s still ran together. For a while.

And he would definitely enjoy instructing their illustrious leader on how to get his hands dirty.... Gan was still standing there, staring at him with a laborious frown. The nascent warmth of amusement at Blake’s expense died still-born.

“Yes? What is it?” Avon’s voice held a warning.

Gan glanced down briefly at the limp body he held. For a moment his face softened; then he glanced up, accusation in his eyes. “Just how much did you know about all this, Avon? About Cally —” an awkward sweeping gesture with his head — “being here?“

Avon froze for an instant, genuinely taken aback; then he laughed, shortly. “If I thought you had any idea at all of the implications of what you’re suggesting, I’d be flattered. As it happens, I had no more idea of Cally’s presence than Blake or the rest of you.” And as it happened, that was no more than the simple truth; but out of habit he let an edge of contempt slide under his words — wasted, no doubt, on Gan. “Unless, of course, our leader possesses a far greater capacity for dissimulation than he has hitherto displayed.”

But Gan just stood there with Cally in his arms, staring at him with that little mark of puzzled distress between his brows, and Avon tired abruptly of the game. Baiting Gan was poor enough sport at the best of times, and evidently this was not one of them.

He activated the communicator link on his teleport bracelet. “Vila? Two to teleport — and fix on my current position. Do you understand? Good.” He waited until he heard the other end of the link close, then, without hurry, unfastened the catch, took two steps forward, folded back the wrappings that swathed her and clipped his own bracelet around Cally’s right arm.

“Aren’t you going to tell him? —” Gan broke off, taken aback, as he realised what Avon was doing.

“Vila? About Cally?” Avon raised a haughty eyebrow. “I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of the pleasure.”

At the back of his mind, a little timer was counting down. Vila had been on the flight deck. He should be reaching the teleport bay any moment... now. Watching Gan’s frown grow, he gauged his moment for the final, casual, order. “Oh, and when you’re ready, put Jenna back down at this position, with a spare teleport bracelet....”

Then Gan and Cally shimmered and were gone.

* * *

“He said _what_?” Tapping out balled ice from the sole of her boot against the side of the outcrop, Jenna almost lost her balance. “All right, Vila, I heard you the first time....”

She glanced at Blake, who was leaning against the rocks a few yards away, head bent, still turning the short fragment of polished wood over and over in his gloved hands under the pretence of examining it. Like the other débris — broken lashings, scraps of food — they had found in this small trampled area, the splintered wooden blade-tip had to have been abandoned here by the retreating rebel group while they prepared to tackle the next stretch of deep snow; but unlike the rest, it held a vital significance. Low-tech, high-maintenance maybe, like their weapons — gleaned from lowland scavengings, no doubt — but without foot-skis like this, or their more sophisticated equivalent, she and Blake had no chance of following any higher along the rebels’ trail.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t tried. Overlying the sidelong blade-marks and the shallow grooves of sled-runners along the continuing upward route were the clumsy scars of their own futile flounderings. Beyond this one exposed ridge and the deep-ploughed trail that had brought them here, the snow on the slopes progressed with frightening rapidity from knee-high to waist-high to shoulder-high and beyond. No need for ambush; no need for the avalanche triggered from above that had featured, half-voiced, in their mutual concerns. If the two of them had succeeded in attracting any attention at all, those unseen watchers must be splitting their guts laughing.

As if sensing her eyes on him, Blake finally tossed aside the broken ski-tip and looked up. There was bitterness in his face, but no acknowledgement of defeat. “There’s nothing more we can do here, Jenna — you know that. We’ve been too late all along, always trailing one move behind, reacting when we ought to have been anticipating.... If Avon can really get us a tracer fix on this group’s headquarters it could change all that; give us the edge for the first time. Claw back a little hope for this desolated planet —”

“Insecution’s not worth it, Blake!”

Oh, she was all in favour of freedom, in the abstract; freedom to trade without the dead hand of the Administration on her neck, to mock at pompous rules-sticklers, to gamble both past and future prosperity and existence itself on a swift ship and the skill of a hair’s-breadth turn — to live life to the utmost, and to the edge. Sometimes, when she was with Blake, she could even grasp at the fringes of the passionate vision that drove him. A world where honesty was more than just naïvety, where the courts gave justice, the Fleet fought to protect and not to enslave, and power demanded more from its possessors than wealth alone or lack of scruple... not a perfect world, not even a world so very different from their own; but for Blake at least, a world worth believing in.

It was just — Jenna sighed, glancing at the churned snow around them and then across at the dreary grey-veiled slopes on the other side of the pass — it was just that when you actually came to it, most oppressed people and planets weren’t exactly appealing in the first place. It took an unusual degree of idealism — or idiocy — to care about the masses of Earth’s swarming Deltas. Or, for that matter, about liberating Insecution.

“Blake, we’ve given it our best try. The planet’s a barren ice-ball, the native government’s corrupt, the rebels don’t want to know —”

“If we don’t warn them, that whole community is going to be captured for torture.” He took a pace towards her, and they glared at each other for a second. Blake’s jaw was set. “I’m not going to let it happen, Jenna.”

She held the stare a moment longer, then broke off with a sigh, thrusting hair back into her hood. “Fine.” Her voice was cool. “Just don’t count on my help, that’s all.” Don’t take my support for granted, Blake...

“All right, Vila,” Blake said quietly, “bring us up.”

After the surface, the teleport bay was uncomfortably warm. Blake began hurriedly to strip off the thermal suit and gloves, then glanced back at her, a shadow passing over his face. “Are you going down after Avon, or shall I?”

“I’ll go,” Jenna said grimly, taking the bracelet he handed her. She had her own ideas about Avon.

Vila was hurriedly resetting the co-ordinates. She scowled at him. “You could have done this, Vila —”

“I was busy, wasn’t I?” Vila was unrepentant. “Helping Gan with Cally. Anyhow, Avon said —” He broke off as his hand went out to the main switch.

It took her a moment after she materialised to get her bearings. Vila had put her down near the slewed tail-end of the hover-crawler, close to where they’d found Cally; but there was no immediate sign of Avon. She cursed under her breath, one hand drifting automatically to the haft of the gun at her side, and glanced round urgently. “Avon!”

Out in the centre of the pass a crouching shape stood up somewhat stiffly in response and beckoned. Jenna frowned upwind, gesturing sharply in her turn for him to make a move, but Avon showed no signs of co-operation, and with an ill grace she was forced to make her way to join him.

“You took your time.” He barely spared her a glance as she arrived.

Coming it a little too strong, Avon.... “Why? Wasn’t that supposed to be the point?” That brought his attention round with an almost audible snap, and Jenna’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not planning to claim that you were prepared to wait down here just for the pleasure of my company, I trust....”

“Hardly.” The brief, contemptuous smile stung, as he had intended. She refused to be deflected.

“Either Gan or Vila could have brought you down a bracelet — or you could have gone up to the ship yourself, and brought back a spare for Cally. But you wanted an excuse to wait — so it had to be me or Blake. And you assumed I’d be easier to handle.”

“Evidently a miscalculation.” Avon’s face betrayed nothing save cold and impatience. He held out a gloved hand for the teleport bracelet. Jenna chose to ignore the hint.

“You made sure you’d be alone down here for at least five minutes, didn’t you, despite Blake.” It was not phrased as a question. “I was wondering just what it was you needed to ‘take care’ of — on your own.” Her stance was casual, one hand on her hip, the other resting unobtrusively near the weapon in her belt. She tilted her head back, watching him from beneath lowered lashes. “I was wondering if there might be some... available... profit.”

Not so much as a tell-tale flicker of the eyes to give her any clue as to what he’d got hidden, and where. “You’re quite mistaken, of course.” Avon didn’t even bother trying to make it sound sincere.

Bluff called. They both knew there wasn’t a thing she could prove. Jenna glared at him. “So what are you doing out here?” She indicated the limp shape in the snow at his feet with distaste. “Stripping the dead?”

The boy couldn’t have been more than about sixteen, if that. The round, freckled face beneath the mop of fair hair was made for cheerful grins or sheepish looks; the expression of frozen terror in the half-open eyes had no place there. Jenna was familiar with death, but this corpse had the ugly incongruity of a child’s toy discarded on the floor of a mortuary. She looked away, up at Avon. “What’s the attraction?”

“A single shot to the skull, with an energy weapon.” Avon’s voice was level, almost academic in tone. He glanced down in his turn, stirring a snow-caked sleeve with the tip of his boot. “And I think his hands were tied. This wasn’t a fight, Jenna. It was an execution.”

There was a moment of silence, save for the wind. “And what does that mean?”

“I don’t know, yet,” Avon said slowly, moving to take the teleport bracelet from her unresisting fingers. He clipped it in place around his sleeve, frowning. “But I shall be... interested to hear Cally’s account.”

Instinctively, Jenna looked over her shoulder at the faceless shrouded slopes that towered above them, suddenly, unaccountably eager to be out of this place. “So shall I.” She shivered and took a pace closer to Avon, preparing to raise her bracelet to call for teleport. “So shall I.”

* * *

In the darkness beyond the cargo hatch, on the floor-plates at the rear of the crawler’s ransacked cabin, a small tripod-like device sent out two brief, coded pulses. Neatly assembled by swift fingers, using a set of nondescript parts small enough to fit unobtrusively into a pocket or belt-pouch, the tiny beacon’s transmission circuits were programmed to attempt contact three times only, at four-minute intervals. With no response detected to its initial signal, it had lapsed back into dormancy; but this time things were different.

Micro-circuits analysed the return signal for discrepancies, checked the variation against known tolerance, and confirmed it as valid, triggering further circuits. The beacon sent out a single remodulated pulse.

“What d’you make of it?”

The _Onora_ ’s bridge was cramped and makeshift, with trails of crude-bore cable tacked seemingly at random across deck and bulkheads, linking in a rough assortment of scavenged and upgraded equipment to the ship’s original systems. There was little enough left that her designers would have recognised now. Weapons control was almost buried in a converging maze of cross-linkages. Auto-navigation had been moved altogether, the old interface computer sockets blanked off or plumbed in to the outputs from the jury-rigged manual board that overflowed from the neighbouring pilot’s station, and featured a display of fingertip extras that would not have disgraced the helm of a Federation cruiser.

Twice now in her career, the _Onora_ had been boarded. On the second occasion, her captors had been unable even to master the controls enough to break orbit before the crew had hijacked a shuttle and fought their way back on board — despite the fact that they’d had almost eight hours uninterrupted in which to do so. Appearances were deceptive. The _Onora_ ’s bridge might have all the apparent logic of a junk-heap, but for its size it was very sophisticated indeed.

The man largely responsible for it all, Jak Olsson — ex-ship’s fitter, self-taught engineer, part-owner and sometime commander of the _Onora_ — was little more prepossessing in appearance than his vessel. Yana elbowed him forcibly backwards with her free arm as she wiped the sweat from her own dark-stubbled skull where the headset was slipping. “Hold off breathing down my neck, can’t you?”

“What d’you make of it?” Jak insisted, backing off. Built like a bruiser, with skin space-tanned almost as dark as her own and a face that seemed made for menace, most of his bulk was fat, without the muscle to back up the threat. He could be mean enough in a petty way, as Yana knew to her cost, but physical confrontation wasn’t his style. He’d put more time into the ship than any of them — souped her up way beyond her original spec — and his five part-shares out of twelve reflected that, but Yana, who held only a single part-share in the ship through her job as scanner tech, didn’t reckon that gave him any right to push her around.

Nils was the one to watch. Nils, the other captain, with three shares to Jak’s five, was vicious, and bright with it. He’d set this deal up; but he was working the other end of it back in Blackport with Lin, and the ship was Jak’s this run. None of the crew were sorry. Old Man Olsson liked to throw his weight around; Nils didn’t bother. Nils just stabbed you in the back. One of these days, he’d do it for real.

Jak was hovering again, cramming his bulk in sideways between the new nav-array cabinet and her scanner boards. The cabinet swayed. “All right, all right, I’m on the case,” she flung over her shoulder, feeding the signal from down on the surface into the code tape Nils had given her. “Just give me a tick, will you?”

The computer beeped. No match. She frowned, re-running the signal. The frequency was down in the L-band. She boosted it. That was better. “Got it. We’re in business.”

She sat back and stretched, grinning. She’d get out, if this one went right. Sell off her share and buy into another ship. Maybe give up raiding and go straight, who could tell? She’d had it up to here with Nils and Jak and all the rest of them.

“Got what?” Jak peered at the screen, enveloping her shoulder in a vast moist paw. She swatted him off, automatically. Her own singlet was damp with sweat, but that was her affair. Too many systems in too small a space gave the _Onora_ ’s bridge a damp heat fit to rival the river-bottoms back home on Mangombe.

“Code eleven.” She stabbed a calloused dark finger at the display. “It’s the go-ahead. ‘Stand off and await instructions.’”

A disapproving rumble from Jak’s direction. “Been doing that too long already. I give him two more days — maybe only one.”

“Then what?” Yana flipped her seat round, poked the big man in the gut. “No, we give him as long as it takes. If he makes a go of it, we’ll all be rolling in the right stuff. If not....” She winked at Jak, who leered back.

“That’s right. Cool million in bounty money. Can’t say no to that.” A sudden shrewd flash in the tiny eyes. “He knows that though, don’t he?”

“Course he knows. You don’t get brains like that and not know. But he’s cocky — like Nils. Thinks he can pull it off for sure.” She grinned. “Nils and him... that should be worth seeing. Wonder who’ll get the knife in first?”

In the dark, far below, two thousand spacials and more, the beacon’s simple circuits had reached the final phase in their programming. A tiny current bridged between two isolated contacts. With an almost soundless flash, the tripod seemed to implode.

When the dust cleared, there was nothing left that was recognisable. Kerr Avon took care to leave very little to chance.


	31. Part 3: Insecution, Chapter 31: The Right Tool

The acoustics of Assembly Room G in the Hall of Sciences, like those of all the other public rooms in this section, had been engineered to perfection. Low-voiced conversation among the audience, standing or casually seated in informal groups, was all but inaudible more than a few yards away. One might almost conduct an exchange with complete discretion in full public view. Certainly, for those who were inclined to listen, the constant background murmur of talk formed no impediment to the clarity of the voices of the speakers on the platform. Every syllable from the centre of the stage carried as clearly as a personal viscast.

Dr Andorf was in particularly good voice this afternoon, Servalan considered, taking the opportunity to glance up at the scientist over her companion’s shoulder as the latter bent forward to deliver yet another fulsomely-phrased set of compliments. With his silver hair and fine features, Andorf was already the very image of a distinguished man of science; but he also had the knack of an assured delivery that made him master of almost any subject on which he chose to lecture. He could persuade his audiences into the flattering conviction that they too were following every step of the most intricate and abstract reasoning, despite the fact that he himself had completed no original research in years. Coupled with an outstanding ability to gain the admiration and confidence of his underlings, together with a large share in the credit for their achievements, it was a talent that had gained him a succession of highly-remunerated directorships, culminating in his elevation some three years ago to head the Soteros Project. It was almost a pity that of his current audience — those Insecution dignitaries either important or ambitious enough to claim a part in the welcoming ceremonies for the _Gergovia_ — only a handful had sufficient technical knowledge to follow the content of his lecture, and still fewer of them were listening.

Servalan smiled graciously upon her companion as his polished periods reached their elegant conclusion, and murmured a few suitable words of acknowledgement as she tried to remember his name. Ismaliouk, that was it — a prominent industrialist, private owner of the textile monopoly in two at least of this planet’s major Domes. A man with a great deal to lose, under the provisional treaty terms Batracho had agreed, unless he could obtain an influential backer within the ranks of the Civil Administration. Evidently he believed flattering the Supreme Commander to be a route to that end. She did not trouble to disabuse him.

A smattering of applause around the room marked the end of Andorf’s address, and as the next speaker was introduced Servalan took the opportunity to excuse herself and move on. She passed from group to group, exchanging a few words with each, gauging the mood of the assembly. There were few new faces present. With a population of barely a million in even the largest of the enclosed cities, the social circle of the upper echelons was of necessity somewhat restricted. The men and women present at today’s convention were, by and large, the same who had been present at the inaugural banquet to mark the start of negotiations last week, at the formal dinner the night before last, and at the dance and exhibition match two days before that. They were petty-minded, provincial, and self-important in the manner of all back-water bureaucrats since before the New Calendar began. Those members of the factions currently in opposition were eager to ingratiate themselves with the Federation; those belonging to Batracho’s faction could, for her purposes, at the moment be discounted. Batracho’s patronage could deliver their support, at least until it began to dawn on them that the new hierarchy of the Federation offered better opportunities for advancement than did the favour of the Governor’s Office — but when that time came, it would be Insecution’s problem and no longer hers.

Neither expense nor quantity had been spared in the luncheon provided by the Institute, nor in the supply of drinks still freely available at the back of the hall, and most of the guests had not scrupled to take full advantage of both. The current speaker, Academician Tkishencho of the Central Hospital, who had none of Andorf’s presence, was being almost totally ignored. A few of the younger men, flushed with drink and the memory of previously-permitted intimacies, sought diversion in the charms of the Federation Supreme Commander and received an icy response for their pains; many of their elders were frankly dozing. The culminating irony, of course, as Andorf, Tkishencho and no doubt most of the other researchers and senior staff on the platform were well aware, was that the anti-virus trials supposedly reflecting such honour upon the Central Hospital were not even taking place. The true test had already begun on the previous evening, up in the distant mountains. This whole convention, like the vast majority of those attending, served no useful function at all.

Tkishencho faltered suddenly, as Servalan became aware of a subdued commotion at the side of the hall. She swung round sharply, abandoning any pretence of interest in the platitudes to which she was currently being subjected, and glimpsed Batracho in the act of entering the room. Despite the group that had immediately gathered around him, he appeared to be scanning the faces of the assembly. Their eyes met.

With an impatient gesture for the unhappy Academician to continue his address, Batracho began to thread his way towards her. Aware of all eyes on her, Servalan checked an instinctive movement to join him and waited, poised and imperious, watching him cross to her side.

There was a new assurance in his bearing that had not been there when last they met. Everything from his sleek head to the flowing folds of his cape of office bespoke growing awareness of power, and of his rank. Servalan observed the signs with cool amusement and a certain touch of unexpected approval. It seemed Morrey Batracho had finally found the courage to take events into his own hands. It was a hint of a steel she had doubted that he possessed.

“Supreme Commander.” For a moment it was a greeting between equals; then his gaze fell in acknowledgement of the orbiting power of the Federation. Servalan smiled.

Sinking down into an empty chair, she indicated that he should do likewise, with an eloquent gesture that left the white curve of one shoulder displayed invitingly against the dark fabric behind her. The pendant at her throat trembled slightly and slid deeper as she leaned forward. Batracho sat down almost mechanically, his attention all too obviously caught and held, and Servalan leaned closer. Golden threads ran outwards, shimmering, like wings across the clinging bodice of her gown.

She let her fingers brush lightly across the insignia on the great brooch at his throat, watching his expression from under down-swept lashes. The raised outline of the Insecution crest was rough to her touch and the cruel sweep of the _malochishka_ ’s claws had been depicted in loving detail. Scavenger, predator, queen of the skies, it was the fierce grey-furred flyer that the earliest colonists had chosen as the emblem to represent themselves and their planet — and its idealised image, savagery painted as nobility, that the colony’s crowd-pleasing elected officials had borne ever since. In the case of a few of them, no doubt, it might even have been vaguely appropriate.

The old-fashioned vacuum-bloom on the surface of the metal betrayed the age of the casting, and the greenish tint to the silvered wire inlay meant that one of the planet’s few native metallic ores had been used. Servalan ran her fingers around the rim of the brooch, caressingly, allowing her touch to linger on the collar of the cape beneath. In a way, the very crudeness of workmanship and materials was proof positive, for those who still cared for such things, that the heavy clasp was just what had been claimed — the centrepiece of the original regalia, worn by every leader since the ‘democracy’ established by the first settlers. A mere worthless symbol; but like all such, potent beyond any intrinsic value. Men and women had schemed and died for the power of this clumsy jewel. When the Supreme Commander had first landed, the brooch had clasped the Governor’s cape of office about the shoulders of Madam Nastasia as she came to meet her.

Servalan raised her eyes at last, dark with hinted intimacy, to Batracho’s complacent face. Nastasia Inkol, like others before her, had underestimated the ambitions of her deputy. She had been only the latest to pay the inevitable price.

“My congratulations, Governor.” The lovely smile widened. “And, of course, my commiserations — both for your personal bereavement of such a valued friend and colleague, and for the unhappy loss to your nation of its wisest leader and negotiator at this momentous time. I am sure posterity cannot help but admire the manner in which you have... handled the whole unfortunate situation.”

Batracho smiled in return, one hand brushing across his moustache. “But then it goes without saying, madam, it would hardly have been possible without your help.”

Servalan stiffened at the adroit reminder. It had been to the Federation’s advantage to arrange the ‘accident’ that had temporarily removed the former Governor immediately before the formal start of negotiations — but it was a move that had indeed provided Batracho with an unparalleled opportunity that had been none of her intention. Insecution’s late Governor had not been the only one ultimately to have underestimated her Deputy. It occurred to Servalan to wonder just who, after all, was being manipulated to the benefit of whom.

She drew back from him, still smiling. “Such a pity that your men failed to notice the unexpected decline in dear Nastasia’s condition when they were present at the hospital yesterday,” she parried sweetly. “The crisis must have come that same afternoon — and all the reports suggested she was recovering so well.” One hand trailed lightly down his arm, and she felt a muscle there jump beneath her touch.

He moistened his lips. “Indeed.” A somewhat ragged breath. For a moment, his other hand came over to cover her caressing fingers; then, with an effort, his grip slid up to encircle her wrist, and tightened, vice-like, compelling her to stop. “Indeed — a most unexpected misfortune. But who are we to judge? I am sure the medical staff did all they could....” His smile now was as brittle as her own. “Of course, you would have been among the first to know.... if it had not been for your own indisposition.”

“My _what_?” Servalan snatched her hand back. Too late, she realised she had betrayed herself.

“A headache, was it not?” Batracho’s tone was urbanity itself. Only the politely raised eyebrows suggested otherwise. “I tried to get a message through, but your man Allard was most adamant in defence of your privacy.”

There was speculation in his eyes; tacit dismissal, as between adults, of the polite fiction. “Unexpected misfortunes happen, madam. That transporter accident, last night, for example. The troublemaker Burton and his whole patrol... a handsome devil and no mistake, but I doubt even his mother would care to see what’s left of him now. Dangerous things, I’ve always felt, transporters — but so convenient.”

“Oh, I believe we understand each other perfectly, Governor,” Servalan agreed coldly from behind her own smiling façade. Her patience was at an end.

A simple task — and Venn had bungled it, had he? Or had it even been deliberately done, to leave traces leading back to the Supreme Commander? Since Venn’s return she had made sure that Allard had always been within sight of him, unobtrusive but without cease. Venn had had no chance as yet to report back to his spymasters, whoever they might be — but there was another ‘accident’ already overdue to happen. All that she lacked was the right tool.

She glanced up sharply, aware as always of the eyes watching them. “I believe you sought me out, Batracho. You and I know well enough that the Governor of Insecution does not accost the Federation Supreme Commander at a public function for the exchange of idle gossip alone — however enthralling. What is it that you have to tell me? And what do you want?”

For a moment she had the pleasure of seeing him taken aback; but only for a moment. “By all means, Supreme Commander, business before pleasure — quite right.” He too cast a swift glance around. At the front of the hall Tkishencho was still droning on, but few of those present were even feigning to pay attention to the long-winded address. The murmurs running through the audience were spreading like wildfire; and every eye was turned to the new Governor and to the beautiful woman who held the military power of the Federation.

Batracho frowned and lowered his voice. “On second thoughts, madam, if you would care to accompany me to the main office —”

“I think that whatever we have to say can be discussed here and now with perfect discretion, Governor.” Servalan had no intention of allowing him to regain his balance. She leaned across again, her breath close enough to stir the fringe of his cloak. “Don’t you agree?”

“Very well, madam —” Batracho stood up abruptly — “do I gather then that you authorised the actions of the Federation officer who within the last half-hour made a close orbit and landing at Verno port, and proceeded to commandeer official ground-car transport into the city on the pretext that his commission required him to report only to you directly?”

Servalan had sprung to her feet in his wake. “I most certainly did not. My escort is under the strictest orders —” Those around them were staring now with a vengeance. She ignored them. “Which ship was it? Where is the officer now?”

“As to that, Supreme Commander....” Batracho hesitated a little. “I gather it was not actually one of the escort fleet. It arrived in orbit less than an hour ago, made a brief pass by the Federation fleet and then came in to land without flight clearance or any acknowledgement of port control. Verno security report that the craft is relatively small, possibly one of your modified pursuit class, and appears to have travelled some considerable distance. If you require detailed information, no doubt your staff officers on board the _Amritsar_ would be better qualified —”

“Enough.” Servalan’s lips tightened. She would deal with her Staff later. “Do you have this officer under secure custody? Who does he claim to be?” But already she had more than half-guessed the answer. Only one man reported to her, and her alone. Only one man would have contrived his arrival with such cavalier disregard for non-Federation authority. Only one man had led a flotilla of long-range pursuit ships on what she had good reason to believe had to have been an empty errand to the Second Sector.

“Under strict observation — but not as yet under arrest. He was most insistent that you would wish to see him in person once you were informed of his name, and — forgive me — it is not a name which is entirely unknown, even on Insecution.”

A touch of cruel amusement. “I see. Zircaster?” An unfortunate episode: but one her predecessor had not scrupled to make widely known among certain less-than-securely allied worlds — _pour encourager les autres_.

Batracho frowned. “Then you _are_ aware —”

“An informed guess.” She cut him short. “I think... in the circumstances... I may agree to see this officer. But not yet. I take it you would not be averse to letting him cool his heels a little first? I thought not. This evening, then. We shall observe the prisoner together. I may have need of a man with experience like his in techniques of... persuasion.”

“By ‘the prisoner’ you mean... the young woman Burton brought back?” Batracho suggested smoothly. “The ‘interesting subject’ of so much attention by your psychologists?”

“We understand each other. As always.” She moved closer. Her bodice shimmered as she breathed. “I only regret that I shall be unable to remain on Insecution long enough to attend your forthcoming inauguration as Governor.”

Dead men’s shoes required no ‘election’. Batracho had neatly circumvented Insecution’s clumsy political system. He was guaranteed Nastasia’s office for the six years that remained of her term — and if this treaty went through, with the planet securely locked into the Terran Federation, there would be no more charade of regular votes. He would hold his rank for life; or at least for as long as the Federation chose to let him keep it. His life, that was.

The thought was sweet enough to put genuine promise into Servalan’s smile, and despite himself, Batracho caught his breath, his gaze betraying all too obviously the direction of his imagination. Servalan smiled again, turning slightly to display the jewels that glittered at her throat. “I can rely upon you, then, to keep our mutual friend... occupied... until later? I must warn you that he has been known to display a somewhat peremptory attitude towards bureaucracy.”

Batracho laughed at that, with a brief flash of teeth beneath the clipped moustache. “Supreme Commander, I assure you that Insecution bureaucracy is more than capable of delaying _anyone_ when the Governor so desires — even Space Commander Travis.”


	32. Breakthrough

“Vila, shut up — and either sit down and stay put or get off the flight deck!” Vila jumped as Jenna slammed a hand down on the pilot’s console.

“Look, Jenna, I just wondered if Avon had —” He subsided hurriedly as he caught Jenna’s eye. There was a certain look in it that he’d learnt, from experience, meant she was about to let rip with the blistering side of her tongue.

He knew the answer, anyhow, he’d heard it often enough: ‘Not since the last time you asked....’ Didn’t know why he kept asking, really. They’d shaken off that other ship last night, almost as soon as they’d left the planet — if the _Onora_ had even been intending to follow them, that was; she certainly hadn’t made that convincing a job of trying — and since then nothing had happened. Hours and hours of nothing but false alarms, while they dodged round the solar system, with Cally flat out in the medical unit like a drained white shadow. With Blake and Avon frantically re-plumbing the ship’s innards in grim silence, through the night watches and on into the morning and then the afternoon without a let-up.

The rest of them hadn’t exactly been having it easy, either. The Arnya system might not be official Federation territory — and Yakostonok and Verno, down on Insecution itself, were hardly in the same league as Blackport — but there was enough traffic coming through the system to keep the _Liberator_ on constant alert. Gan had been eating, sleeping and living in the medical unit, watching over Cally, only making an appearance when he was needed to cover an extra watch. Jenna had hardly been off the flight deck for the last twenty hours, what with one thing and another. As for Vila himself, he’d done his two watches like the others — not that he’d made any bones about calling Jenna that time Zen had spotted a pursuit ship cutting straight through all the other traffic, or the time they’d almost run straight into a small freighter looping round an inner planet, or any of the various other times events had seemed to be getting out of hand....

Without realising it, Vila had started drifting restlessly along the side of the flight deck again, glancing at displays here and there without really seeing them, fiddling with controls until they were perfectly centred or all in line at one end or other of their travel. With a jolt, he found Jenna glaring at him.

He beat a hasty retreat to a seat at the front of the flight deck, safely out of range. Not that he cared two bits for anything Jenna could say to him, of course, but — well, she was company of a sort, and it was less depressing up here than down in the tense sterility of the medical unit, or the obscure cramped corners Avon and Blake had variously disappeared into. A length of flexible cord had made a miraculous appearance from his pocket, and automatically he began working it into changing shapes between his fingers. Loops slid and twisted, figures gliding over one another in a parody of life under his hands, melting away into emptiness like the remorseless minutes and hours that had been trickling past. Whatever it was Avon was trying to do — it was taking all too long.

The unhappy lines were deepening between Vila’s brows. Nothing had seemed to go right for them since they’d lost Cally in Blackport. It had been almost as if she’d taken Blake’s luck with her... but they had her back now. Everything was going to be all right — wasn’t it? The cord slipped and tightened around his finger, and he bit his lip.

“What do you make of Cally’s story, Jenna?” he burst out suddenly, surprising even himself. He twisted round in his seat to crane up at her and found her staring at him. “No, hang on — I forgot, you weren’t there....”

“Gan gave me the rough gist.” Jenna shrugged. “I gather she wasn’t exactly coherent anyhow.”

“No.” Vila shook his head. “No, she wasn’t.” Winding string tightly between his palms, he remembered haunted eyes in a bloodless face, and unconsciously a shadow passed across his own. “Gan kept trying to make her rest, but I think she wanted to talk....”

She’d slept, afterwards; real sleep, this time, Gan said. She’d hardly stirred since. It was late in the ship’s day now — getting on for the end of fourth shift, almost time for the first night-watch — and he needed to put in some sleep himself if he was going to be up here to take his own watch in another four hours’ time. Somehow, the idea didn’t have so much appeal any more. Cally’s sleep might now at last be dreamless — with the memory of her half-voiced, halting account even now still dragging in his ears, Vila was no longer any too certain of his own.

“Not a pretty story.” There was a certain softening in Jenna’s cool, assessing eyes. “No more than I’d expect, from the Federation; but Cally’s the sort to take it hard —”

“You believe her, then?”

He could have bitten the words back the moment they were blurted out. The fine-drawn arch of Jenna’s brows rose. “You don’t?”

And that was decidedly unfair. “Of course I do....” I never doubted her, did I, not for a minute? “But you — and Avon —”

“There’s nothing left in the Federation for Cally now,” Jenna said quietly. “What’s more, there never was, and she knows it....” She glanced down at her controls for a moment, making an adjustment. When she looked up, her face had hardened. “And Avon’s got his finger in a pot of his own.”

Vila choked back a brief hysterical vision of Avon solemnly stirring a large vat, and nodded, not entirely surprised. “He’s been too smooth by half ever since Blackport. All that stuff about Cally, that was just word-games —”

“Avon never cared one way or the other about Cally.” It was a flat statement. “He’s been playing us on a string since he changed his mind about Insecution, with Cally as spur or bait. Whatever he wants, it’s down there — and he thinks he can use us to get it for him.”

“On Insecution?” Vila’s jaw dropped. “I knew it. He’s finally gone off his head. There’s nothing down there that’s worth so much as _eating_ —”

Jenna didn’t even bother to tell him to shut up. She had whirled out from her seat and down the side of the flight deck in a swift, set-lipped onset that had him flinching back instinctively. “And what about you, Vila?”

“Me?” Automatic denial squeaked upwards into genuinely aggrieved innocence. “But I haven’t done anything!”

“No,” Jenna agreed, blocking his way past her. “You totally failed to report that ship that turned up shadowing the _Liberator_ while we were down on the planet, for a start. Did you really think I wouldn’t check with Zen? You didn’t report it — you didn’t even mention it in passing —”

Oh yes, just drop a hint in your ear during one of our regular casual chats, I suppose? Vila wondered indignantly. You know, Jenna, back in that transit cell we used to have a real conversation once in a while, when you needed to talk. We used to watch out for each other in those days — remember? I know I was the best of a bad lot, the only one weak enough to trust at your back, you made that clear enough from the start. We weren’t friends, or anything like that. But you barely even noticed my existence after that day they threw Blake in there with us — until now....

And right now he could have done without her attention. “Blake told me to keep it quiet,” he protested. “Anyhow, the _Onora_ was clear enough on the detectors when we left orbit. When you didn’t mention it, I naturally thought he’d said the same to you —”

“ _Blake_ wanted it kept quiet?”

“Not exactly.” Vila shifted uncomfortably beneath her gaze. “But he didn’t want a big fuss made. After all, they didn’t attack us, or warn the Federation or anything, and they could have done. In fact they didn’t seem to want anything to do with us....” Blake’s eloquence had seemed to made perfect sense at the time; but even to Vila himself it was starting to sound increasingly lame.

“Blake said that?”

He nodded, miserably.

“Vila Restal, you are an idiot —” Jenna’s eyes flashed — “and so is Blake! Just what does he think he’s doing?“

“What do you mean? Why, what do you think he’s doing?” Vila complained without much hope of an answer, scrambling to his feet and trailing after her back up the flight deck. “He’s been worried about Cally, that’s all. He’ll be back to his old self from now on, just you wait and see....”

Predictably, Jenna ignored him; only to swing round abruptly on her heel as they reached Zen. “Where’s Orac?”

“Avon’s got him, you know he has.” That was the last thing Jenna wanted to hear, by the looks of it. Vila rushed on, words almost tumbling over one another: “He’s down under the power chamber, I think — Avon I mean, or maybe it was Blake — anyway you could hear them moving about down there somewhere. And Orac was giving Avon details all about some secret radiation project the Federation used to run —”

“Controlled particle emission,” Avon said drily from the far side of the flight deck, as Vila jumped. The man had no right to move that quietly — not in boots and a stiff tunic....

Avon came down the steps and leaned on the nearest console, surveying the other two with an air of weary contempt. He looked as close to dishevelled as Vila had ever seen him, and the limp he’d picked up down on the planet was back in evidence; but his eyes were sardonic as always.

“The project is hardly a secret, it is still in operation, and radioactivity is not involved. Apart from those minor details —” sarcasm dripped like acid from every syllable — “Vila’s summary of modern scientific achievement is, as usual, flawlessly correct.”

“Come on, Avon, that’s not quite fair.”

Blake had followed him down from the entrance. Now he came round the back of the flight deck to join Jenna. The tired hand he rubbed across his eyes left behind a lopsided green-grey smear of welding powder of which he was mercifully oblivious. “The Federation sponsors almost all major research across the Seven Sectors — you know that. Most of the independents nowadays can’t afford either the personnel or the expenditure on a long-term basis any more.... The Soteros Project has been running for twelve years, but it’s been kept under wraps; most long-running Federation projects are relatively open by comparison, at least among those involved. I heard about the study taking place in the new tracer systems when I was working on incorporating the aquitar alloy, and Avon actually did some contract analysis on tracers before the computer time was reallocated to the matter transmission project. There were rumours of a breakthrough a couple of years ago but apparently it came to nothing... officially at least.” He glanced across at Avon, who straightened up.

“Standard tracer technology is still based around the electromagnetic spectrum, like the _Liberator_ ’s own teleport transmissions, with all the associated limitations; chiefly, severe attenuation of the signal by dense planetary strata and by certain types of shielding, and the inherent power requirements imposed by the inverse square law.” Avon’s voice was dry. “During the period when I was involved with the project, intensive research was being directed towards the application of modern communications advances to tracer technology, in particular to surveillance beams, but they were already reaching the limits of practical miniaturisation. Even using crystalline re-inducers, the amount of energy required to drop a signal through the hyperspace continuum is significant. No-one has yet managed to develop a sub-beam booster unit of less than eighty pounds in weight, and interstellar booster relays are still planet- or ship-mounted — hardly practical for slipping unobtrusively into a suspect’s clothing, even under cover of a clap on the back.”

“Of course, once you’d arranged to drop one of those on a suspect’s back, he wouldn’t be much of a problem to the Federation any more,” Vila couldn’t resist pointing out. “I suppose it would come a bit expensive in brickwork —” He yelped as Jenna’s nails dug into his arm.

“Carry on, Avon.” Her patience was evidently wearing thin. “And get to the point!”

Avon’s eyes had barely flickered. “At some later stage they evidently abandoned the sub-beam approach in favour of concentration on the properties of particle emission. The theory has been well-known since before the Atomic Wars; practical applications have been non-existent.

“Given the right stimulus, certain relatively common minerals can be induced spontaneously to emit low-grade elementary particles in a process analogous to radioactive decay. Unlike radioactive products, such particles interact very weakly, if at all, with surrounding subatomic structures; Burghamer theorised that they may in fact exist simultaneously on both sides of the antimatter barrier. In any case, they are known to travel vast distances without significant deflection or loss of energy. Theoretically, a transmitter containing a tiny quantity of a suitably ‘doped’ substance could be traced over an almost indefinite range. In practice, of course, the distinguishable range would decrease sharply as the number of active signal sources increased.”

“Given that the particles in question will pass through practically anything, the main problem has always been detecting the emissions in the first place,” Blake added as the other man paused. “They used to use a tank of pure mercury the size of half a mountain; then, some time in the last century, someone had the idea of using two counter-stressed force fields and monitoring the input balance. Judging by the project data Orac has been able to trace, I’d say the hand-held detectors Cally described are no more than a logical development of the prototype units on those principles unveiled about two years ago.”

Light dawned on Vila. “You mean — they made out it was a flop so they could do the rest of the work in private?”

“The sublime simplicity of your Delta grasp of terminology never fails to charm me.” Avon’s smile scarcely seemed to bear out his words.

“Wait a minute...” Jenna said slowly before Vila could retort. “A couple of years ago I heard about something like this going the rounds when I was on Ganymede. Detectors that could see through rock; tracers you could follow from the far side of the sun... and I wasn’t exactly moving in scientific circles at the time, Blake. It must have been a pretty open secret.”

“According to Orac, there seems to have been a deliberate leak,“ Avon said shortly. ”The technology was made available to certain... elements of society — for testing purposes, perhaps. In addition to the miniaturisation, the latest Federation specifications show specific changes to the structure of the fields used and to the type of doping applied to the tracer elements; both apparently designed to minimise interference with outside systems and to shield the operating personnel in the short-term from possible degenerative radiation. Prototypes carried no such safeguards.“

He had been working around the edges of the console with a small hand-seamer as he spoke. Now he laid down the tool for a moment and, with a jerk, pulled an entire section of the upper casing free. Automatically, Vila craned for a better view and glimpsed packed green circuitry, overlaid by a mass of coiled linkage that reminded him, for one queasy moment, of the inside of a man’s guts he’d once glimpsed in the aftermath of a street-knifing. Avon had calmly plunged his hands in and was lifting the pulsing tubes aside. Vila swallowed hard and let his eyes drop.

When he next looked up, Avon was up to his elbows in circuit-boards and Blake was crouched by one of the front consoles, adjusting something at arm’s-length under the main panel by touch, his gaze on Avon for confirmation. His other hand moved awkwardly across the surface of the console, seeking out the positions of the controls. As if in slow-motion, even as Vila watched, Blake’s fingers came to rest above the trigger for the main neutron blasters.

“Blake — wait —” Vila caught his breath and started forward instinctively. ”You can’t —”

Avon, at the back of the flight deck, lifted his head, caught Blake’s eye, and gave a single nod. Blake’s hand tightened on the firing switch. Nothing happened.

“Do I gather that we’ve just lost our main armament?” Jenna said coldly into the silence that followed. She glanced from Zen to Avon. “Or is this some kind of new fail-safe linked to the flare shields?”

Avon’s head was bent over his work again. He paused and looked up briefly, his mouth tightening. “I re-channelled the power feed of the neutron blasters in order to generate a second, cross-stressed, field in parallel with the reconfiguration of the _Liberator_ ’s force wall. The combination will produce a broad-plane detector net perpendicular to the main hull that should serve to register any tracer particles within half a million spacials. The calculations required to pinpoint the source will be routed through Zen’s navigational functions to the standard scanner display. In effect, the ship has just acquired a new set of sensors.”

“Leaving us with neither weapons nor shields? Hardly a fair exchange, Avon! I thought you said you had the latest specifications for hand-held detectors —”

“Given half-a-dozen qualified technicians, unlimited supplies of trace-alloyed germanium, and a properly-tooled production line,” Avon retorted with unexpected savagery, “I might have some chance of duplicating in a week and a half the results achieved by an entire Federation research team over the course of the last two years. Under current circumstances —” his attention had already returned to the circuits under his hands — “I preferred to employ the resources we already have available in order to produce a working detector within twenty-four hours.”

He broke off to give another signal to Blake. Again, there was no visible result that Vila could see; but Avon’s grim expression relaxed slightly. “As for the safety of the _Liberator_ — well now, that will have to depend entirely on the skill of her pilot.” He contrived to make it quite plain what value he set upon that commodity.

The sparkle in Jenna’s eyes might, of course, have been pleasure at the compliment, if she had chosen to read Avon’s words that way. Somehow, Vila felt that was highly unlikely. He cast a despairing glance at Blake. Over the past week, tempers and patience had been stretched to breaking-point all round — and Avon and Jenna didn’t exactly rub along well together at the best of times. Whatever Blake had in mind, surely it didn’t include daggers drawn on the flight deck? Metaphorically or not....

“Jenna, the Federation don’t know we’re here,” Blake pointed out, extracting himself from his cramped position with a wince, and standing up. “All we have to do is to keep it that way for a few more hours until we can get the tracer fix pinpointed from orbit.” The shadow of a rueful grin. “Even without the main blasters, you know, _Liberator_ isn’t entirely toothless.”

“Without the force wall, on the other hand, we’re totally vulnerable! Without _both_ —”

“I know,” Blake said quietly. “I don’t like it either, Jenna. But I don’t see that we have any choice.”

No other choice? Vila’s eyebrows shot upwards. Even Blake surely didn’t believe that. And Avon.... Instinctively he glanced at Avon and caught Jenna doing the same. There was a queer off-balance moment of silence as they both waited for the biting response that failed to come.

“I say we drop everything and get out of here!” he blurted, too fast, into the gap. “ _Liberator_ ’s got the heels on everything in this Sector — they’d never catch us —”

“Vila, they’re not _looking_ for us!”

“— not yet they aren’t —”

“Right now, as Vila says, speed is our only defence.” Jenna’s voice cut across them both. “Do you really think we can get away with it for another twenty hours, Blake?”

“I don’t see why not. After all, if you think about it, we haven’t fired a shot in anger since we tangled with those pursuit ships at Ivarl on our approach to Earth Sector....”

“You know, it’s funny, but if you think about it, that’s the last time we were poking into Federation business, too,” Vila said pointedly, but no-one took any notice of him.

“...only four hours back to Insecution, even at in-system speeds,” Blake was saying, frowning, and Jenna sighed.

“Yes — and what sort of time do you think it will be, down on the planet, by that stage? By my reckoning, it was past 1700 hours, local time, when Avon and I teleported up yesterday — and at those latitudes it was already starting to get dark. That means it’ll be dusk in the mountains right now. By the earliest time we can make orbit, the whole area will be well into the night side of the planet. You can’t argue with the sun, Blake. We’ll just have to wait.”

“And with Servalan on the scene, the less time we spend hanging around in Insecution orbit the better,” Avon put in, glancing up from his work for a moment.

Blake nodded. “All right, Zen. I want a course that will take us back to a stationary orbit at our previous position, timed for two hours after daybreak. How long does that give us?”

“SUNRISE IS PREDICTED FOR STIPULATED CO-ORDINATES AT 1152 HOURS FEDERATION STANDARD TIME, 0752 LOCAL TIME. CURRENT SHIP TIME IS 2307 AT F.S.T. PLUS TWO HOURS. REQUIRED FLIGHT DURATION: SIXTEEN POINT SEVEN FIVE HOURS.”

Jenna shrugged. “You see? We’re talking well into tomorrow before we can even get down there — and who knows what we’ll find?”

“We’ll find the people we’re looking for.” Blake’s tone admitted of no argument. He turned away. “Avon, have we got any readings from the sensors yet?”

“Another ten minutes.” Avon laid down the tool he was using and selected another. “Less — if you pass me the utility module from the force wall monitor control.”

Vila watched the two of them working in silence for a while. Various bits of circuitry were pulled out and replaced; connections were made, buttons were pressed. As spectator entertainment, it ranked only slightly higher than watching ration packs drop off a conveyor belt. He didn’t suppose there’d be much to show for it once Avon had finished, either — just another green blob on the screen to add to all the rest. Give him a pleasure planet any day. Or even a trip back to Blackport would do....

Beside him, Jenna’s increasing impatience stiffened into a sudden tension, breaking into his daydream, and he shot her an indignant glare. A moment later, he heard it too; hurried footsteps on the deck plating.

“You’re late for your watch,” Jenna said sharply as Gan halted, taken aback, on the threshold of the flight deck. By the looks of it he hadn’t expected to find the rest of the crew already in occupation, let alone bits and pieces of Zen’s innards strewn all over the place.

“I know — I’ve been trying to find Blake....”

Below him, Blake had raised his head sharply. “Gan?”

Gan swung round. He offered Jenna an apologetic half-shrug before clattering, breathless, down the steps towards Blake. “It’s Cally....”

Blake’s eyes darkened in shock. “Is she —”

“No — no, she’s fine,” Gan told him hastily. “She’s awake. She was asking for you, Blake.”

“What, now?” Blake looked surprised; but he straightened up, stretching his shoulders briefly, and nodded. “All right. We’ve just about finished here, anyhow. Once Avon’s linked Zen back into the loop, everything should be back to normal for your watch — with a few extras.”

He set the covering panel back in place to hide the conduit channel and glanced up at the other man’s uncertain face. “Get Avon or one of the others to fill you in, Gan. I’ll go and see Cally.”

“Wait.” Avon’s voice was deceptively soft. It halted Blake in his tracks.

“Yes?”

Avon appeared to be choosing his words with care. “In a few minutes’ time we shall finally be in a position to test whether the _Liberator_ can pick up the tracer particle emissions. Do I take it that you have no intention of being present for the results?”

“I imagine my help will hardly be necessary for that part of the operation,” Blake said wearily, and turned away. He was perhaps the only one of them who didn’t see the look on Avon’s face.

Jenna moved swiftly across the flight deck, forestalling him. “We need to talk, Blake.” Vila caught the wordless flicker of her eyes in Avon’s direction.

Blake studied her for a moment, then sighed. “All right. Come on. We’ll talk on the way down.” He glanced back at the others. “I’ll be in the medical unit — if you need me.”

There was an uncomfortable silence after they had gone. It was Avon who broke it. His face had stiffened into an expressionless mask. “I see our leader’s priorities are as idiosyncratic as ever.”

“I think he feels people are more important than machines,” Gan said mildly. “Some of us do, you know.”

“Any truth in that particular saw was lost at the dawn of space flight. Perhaps you would care to debate it next time life-support goes down.” Avon’s lip curled slightly. “In any case, in my experience, it is generally the humans who are trying to kill you. Machines can be trusted to be remarkably neutral in the matter.”

“Well, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather be chased by a man with a big stick than a man with a gun,” Vila put in.

He shot a shrewd glance sideways at Avon. “Cally’s not human, you know. She doesn’t deal in lies.” His own face was schooled to careful innocence. “And it was her that got hurt.”

But he was never to know if that particular shot in the dark would have struck home. Gan, completely missing the point as usual, had started forward eagerly, blocking his view. “Even if we missed the ambush, down on Insecution — at least we managed that much. At least we got there in time to save Cally.”

“I wonder if we did, you know,” Vila said slowly, surprising even himself. He thought about Cally’s white face as he had last seen it; about the ghosts that moved behind her eyes. “Maybe all we managed was to get there in time to pick up the pieces....”


	33. One of Ours

The low gallery was lit only by the faint flickering backwash from the banked monitor displays along the walls. Even the usual screened amber glow from the duty sergeant’s cubicle was missing, its yawning occupant, unable to believe his luck, dispatched up to join his colleagues in the mess-room. The Federation personnel — the observers, the interrogators, the psychologists — had one by one been dismissed in their turn. The two who remained, watching, were alone in the shifting half-dark.

It was against regulations, of course. Technically, it was probably a security breach. But regulations, of late, on Insecution had a way of proving elastic where the Federation’s wishes were concerned; and of the two officers present, one had little patience for technicalities and the other had never even considered that such trifles might apply to her. The monitor gallery remained, for as long as it should suit her, unmanned. After all, the detention block was locked down for the night. The prisoners, monitored or not, were going nowhere.

Reflected light glimmered on the breast of Travis’ uniform and the harsh planes of his face, casting tiny mirrored images in the shadowed depths of his one good eye. It woke faint fire behind him from the jewels at the Supreme Commander’s throat, gleaming briefly like swift water along the threads of her gown as she stirred. Her arms and shoulders showed pale and indistinct in the shadows. There would have been just enough light for him to have made out her expression, had he chosen to turn. He did not consider that there was any need for him to do so.

They had worked together now for almost a year. His ambitions had reached no higher than officer-rank in Space Command; her ambitions had barely embraced that pinnacle as their beginning. His family had been purged and disgraced before his birth; her Family traced back six generations of wealth and power. The remaining future for his career lay on the knife-edge balance of her favour; the witness he could bear against her could be the linchpin of the enquiry that would bring her down. They cherished very few mutual illusions — and they understood each other quite remarkably well.

“And so the remaining pursuit ships of your flotilla are currently attached to the Galactic Eighth Fleet,” Servalan said softly from behind him after a deliberate pause. “You were unable to trace Blake or his spacecraft. You have brought the one pursuit ship and its crew which are still under your personal command all the way from the Second Sector, in direct contravention of orders from Fleet-Warden Samor, in an attempt to enlist my influence to overturn those same orders in favour of your prior commission. In short, Travis, you have failed.”

The word ‘again’ was not spoken. It hung in the air between them, a constant cold presence at his shoulder.

“I was given faulty intelligence.” Travis did not turn. On one of the screens in front of him, a middle-aged prisoner sat on the edge of his bunk, hands clenched in the covers, lips silently moving. The merciless focus of the high camera angle dwelt on the man’s incipient bald spot.

The screen flickered even as he watched. Cheap electron-scanning technology; cheap and outdated... like the worthless reports that had taken him out to the Second Sector in the first place.

“There was no evidence that Blake ever intended to make a base at Ivarl. The three pursuit ships destroyed there were a routine patrol detached from the Eighth Fleet by specific request from the local administration.” Typical civilians, the Ivarl officials had over-reacted to a single publicised incident of piracy in the neighbouring system, pestering Space Command for ‘protection’ until the Warden of the nearby Eighth Fleet had been ordered to assign them a token flight of light pursuit ships just to keep them quiet — then seizing on the first chance to send ‘their’ navy out to death-or-glory battle when Blake’s ship was unexpectedly sighted. In a well-planned ambush, the patrol craft might have stood a chance. In open line of combat they’d been torn apart.

The whole engagement had lasted barely twenty seconds — but for some inexplicable reason it had taken Ivarl almost as many days to report the loss back to Fleet-Warden Samor. Twenty days, in which one more story had already been added to Blake’s inflated legend. Twenty days for the rumours to reach Central Intelligence, and through them to Space Command and, ultimately, to Travis.

“Blake was in that system for less than three hours. No confirmed landing was detected. None of the alleged sabotage has been proved. The trail was cold before the first reports arrived.”

Travis’ flotilla — the ships finally re-assigned him so belatedly and with such a show of reluctance — had found no trace of Blake at Ivarl. Despite the most meticulous search, there had been no sign as to what he had intended there and no clue to the only information that really mattered: where he had been headed when he left. Doggedly, Travis had played the search by the book, deploying ships to check neighbouring systems, retaining a strike nucleus to move in as soon as the target was located. He had known very well that it was hopeless; but this time, at least, the blunder should be shown to be none of his making. He’d played out the farce until the oldest of his ships began to reach the limit of their range. Then he’d called a general rendezvous.

“I gave orders to assemble at the nearest Fleet depot for refuelling before return to Space Headquarters. We encountered the main detachment of the Eighth Fleet on station there and Fleet-Warden Samor, as senior officer, assumed overall command.”

Pulled rank on him, in fact, in a calculated, punctilious insult that had given Travis, fuming, no choice but to comply. The pursuit flight lost at Ivarl and Space Command’s constant parsimony with replacements had only been the excuse. The intent, Travis had no doubt at all, had been to deprive him of the independent command he held direct from Servalan herself.

“And you took the first opportunity to leave the Fleet and appeal to me here in person against Samor’s decision.” The Supreme Commander’s voice was cold. “You do realise, Travis, that you have laid yourself open to court-martial charges? Your action in coming here places me in a very unfortunate position.”

Travis turned at last, staring down into the glittering dark eyes that faced him. “Fleet-Warden Samor’s decision was a direct challenge to your authority,” he warned her. “My commission to hunt Blake came from you personally. Without the ships I need, I have no means of carrying out those orders — and it’s an open secret that the two of you have had certain... disagreements.”

“I think you mistake the matter.” Servalan smiled, deadly sweet. “Samor is an officer of the old school, rigid and correct; one might almost say hidebound. Whatever our private differences, he would never — as he sees it — stoop to such a resort to settle them. I imagine his motives in this case were rather simpler — although somewhat less objective than he doubtless likes to think. Samor believes you unfit to hold your rank.”

“Oh?” Travis allowed the monosyllable to verge on the insolent. The Supreme Commander chose to ignore it.

“Oh, on purely military grounds, of course. The... incident at Zircaster was hardly according to the rulebook. And there have been others.”

High up on Travis’ temple, beneath the grafted eyepatch, a muscle jumped, pulling the scars that seamed the ruined eye. The tell-tale pain of the failing graft stabbed across his senses, a companion that was becoming all too familiar. For a moment he saw Blake’s face again vivid before him, tear-streaked and filthy, eyes wide with pain and horror as the gunshot hit him and the man went down. He’d tried to surrender to Travis; dared to try to place himself and his rabble on a par with real soldiers fighting a real war. Blake and his insurrectionists were petty amateurs, dissatisfied dome-dwellers playing at revolution. They hadn’t even fought back when Travis gave the order to open fire. He almost smiled, remembering how disbelief had turned to terror on their faces as he watched.

And then: and then the searing nimbus of light as Blake, still falling, had somehow brought a gun round from somewhere and fired, the last thing he’d ever seen from that eye. The last thing he’d seen, for a long time, from the other. White heat that had flashed down his left side and charred away flesh and bone; left him with a blackened claw for an arm, a maimed face, and thickened scars to drag at the taut muscles that had once answered to his will.

They’d taken his arm off, afterward. Given him prosthetics. Tried to smooth over the traces of what Blake had done to him, as Servalan’s therapists had tried to wipe his mind. But he’d refused to have his face rebuilt. Five years later, he still bore that same plain black skull-graft that had saved his life, hiding the mutilated eye, marking him out from his clean-cut fellows just as the taint of his family’s treason had held him apart, even in the ranks. Alpha by birth. Suspect by inheritance. Enlisted man. Misfit. Loner.

It was not a face you would forget. It was not — any longer — a face women would be glad to see. But that was the least of the hate he bore Blake, the bleeding-heart. The liberal. The born-Alpha who’d had it all — friends, acceptance, privilege — and amused himself playing at being an outsider. The would-be soldier of liberty who’d been too high-minded — too _soft_ — to fight back.

And yet it was Blake who’d done this to him. Soldier’s scars from a hard-fought campaign on some frontier planet he could have borne with pride. Even wounds taken in defence of the Federation on the street, fighting down armed rebellion by hardened, desperate men, could be worn without shame. To be shot down almost by accident, with a gun grabbed from one of his own men, by a wild-eyed idealist without the guts, when it came to it, even to die by his own pacifist principles — that was to become a laughing-stock. No man made a fool of Travis and lived. No man, ever — save for Blake.

His jaw had clenched, unconsciously, and the pain lanced again behind his eye. The protective graft the field-medic had done on him had saved his life; but it had been a quick-patch job, hastily made. He’d endured the infrequent stabs of pain with the same savage acceptance that had carried him through the aftermath of the maiming; one more item to be laid to Blake’s long account. But the pain was no longer isolated, controllable. The same blinding agony that had echoed through the bloody square at Zircaster came now to dominate him more and more often. Sooner or later he would no longer be able to function normally.

The Fleet medic’s diagnosis had only confirmed what he already knew. The bone graft had failed — was breaking down with every month that passed. The whole plate would have to be reimplanted or replaced. They’d need to drug him into unconsciousness, operate on his skull — and wouldn’t Servalan’s pet therapists just love that opportunity?

The only man he’d willingly have trusted to work on his eye was Maryatt, the medic who’d done the original implant. And thereby lay a fine irony. For even while Travis had set in motion the first steps to trace him, Servalan had all unknowing made use of the surgeon in her own schemes; and now Maryatt too was dead, an incidental victim of sabotage. Sacrificed to the greater glory of the Supreme Commander — if not, ultimately, that of the Federation. And Travis, in the final analysis, had raised not one finger to save him.

Against Servalan, the odds were a thousand to one that any opposition could only ever have been a gesture. A gesture that might well have cost him his liberty, his commission, his hopes of reinstatement — and his chance at killing Blake. Realistic and ruthless to the last, it was a gesture he had not made. Maryatt had set out to save a dying man, and himself had died. Leaving Travis now with the choice to surrender his face and mind to the tender care of Servalan’s physicians; or else sometime soon to suffer disabling torment. This, too, he owed to Blake.

Beyond the shielding eyepatch, he kept his face impassive with an effort. The Supreme Commander’s gaze missed very little. She was still smiling.

“Samor was among those who dared to express open disapproval at the time you were initially appointed to deal with Blake. His views hold considerable weight among a certain faction of the Administration — and he is not alone. You can hardly be unaware that among serving officers —”

“It’s easy for the Fleet to criticise — easy to play by the rules when the ships you’re shooting at are no more than dots on a moving screen.” Travis’ lip had curled into a half-snarl. “Down on the surface with half a city in riot at your back things aren’t quite so pure and simple. They’re glad enough then for troopers to do the dirty work —”

“Travis.” A single word, softly spoken; it held an unmistakable edge of command. She took a step towards him as he fell silent, her face turned up to his in the light of the flickering soundless screens.

“Space Command has nothing but admiration for ruthless efficiency. I have always believed that the ends justify the means. Your appointment was made on my personal judgement; because of your past record, not despite it. I can guarantee that there will be no enquiry into events on Zircaster or any of the other occasions, even if the Administration forces Samor’s promotion through — provided, Travis, that I can show results! You failed to co-operate with the retraining therapists — you have allowed Blake to escape you time and time again. The Federation can have no patience for _failure_.”

“Get me my ships back and I’ll get you Blake.” It was no promise but a harsh statement of fact, jerked out between set teeth. He was Servalan’s creature now — they both knew it — reinstated in his command only while it should amuse her to extend him one finger of her power; but he would not play her games. He was an officer; she was the Supreme Commander, and he took her orders. He would not beg.

“And you will get me Blake....” Servalan’s tone was a mockery of the indulgence she might have shown some spoilt young scion of her own Family. She backed away suddenly, her eyes blazing pools in the pale glimmer of her face. “As you did at Ivarl? Fool, while you were chasing rumours in the Second Sector, Blake was here!”

“Blake — here?” Travis’ right hand clenched, nails biting into his palm. He swung round on the woman as if she had been a hesitant trooper, her mockery and her rank alike ignored. “Are you certain?”

“Of course I’m certain!” Tight-lipped, she gave him a succinct account of her encounter with the alien woman, Blake’s known confederate, and Travis’ own face darkened. He remembered Cally. He remembered her very well. Twice now she and Blake both had been between his hands. Twice she had been witness to his humiliation.

“What have you done with her? Where is she?” he broke in abruptly.

“She was _dead_ , Travis. Quite useless.” The Supreme Commander’s voice was sweet with condescension. “Believe me, I was at some pains to assure myself of that.”

“And so you left her there?” Unthinking and furious, he caught hold of her arm with his left hand, careless of the crushing strength as artificial fingers closed around bare flesh. “Dead or alive, Blake would have come for her, I tell you. As long as we held the body he’d never be sure of the truth before it was too late. And you left her lying there for him to find —”

Servalan’s free hand flashed up to strike him across the cheek, nails raking. “You forget yourself, Space Commander!”

He released her, breathing hard. In the shadows the triple mark of gloved fingers showed livid on her arm. They stared at one another.

“ _There were other priorities_.” Servalan cut off every word with deadly precision. “The woman was dead and there were other priorities, do you understand? Blake is _your_ business, _your_ responsibility — and the Supreme Commander has wider concerns. Do I make myself quite plain?”

Travis jerked his head in token of acknowledgement. His teeth were still clenched. “Then let me do my job. Give me ships. Let me go after Blake!”

“Blake has gone.” She turned, deliberately, and moved to set both hands on the broad rail that guarded the monitor bank a few paces away. The tight panels of her gown scraped over one another with a dry rustle like the discarding husk of some off-world reptile. “Blake has lost a member of his crew and whatever plan he had to use her. He will be licking his wounds and planning his next move with more caution, somewhere far from here. Blake is a spent quantity.”

Travis bit back furious words, glaring at the Supreme Commander’s icy profile. He didn’t believe it for a minute; in Blake’s place he’d have gone for a retaliatory strike, fast and well-aimed, to wipe out any image of defeat.... Where would he hit? Earth? Space Command Headquarters? Here?

“At the very least I want an hourly orbital patrol on this planet. Any sighting of Blake’s ship is to be reported at once.”

“Very well. You may have your patrol.” Servalan barely troubled to veil her impatience. “And I shall consider contacting the Eighth Fleet to arrange the redeployment of that flotilla... just as soon as I no longer require your presence here.”

First the bait and then the spur. It was what he had expected from the start. She would never have allowed him access to her presence at all if she had not had some specific purpose in mind. He almost smiled.

“I thought this was a diplomatic mission to Insecution?”

“Oh it is, Travis, it is.” The Supreme Commander turned back to face him, eyes guileless. “But then the course of diplomacy runs so much more smoothly with a little... judicious lubrication.”

Travis cared nothing one way or the other. “Who is it?”

She made no pretence to misunderstand his meaning. “Intelligence Commander Venn of my personal staff, Insecution liaison officer. He may well be reporting directly to Central Security. I suggest that you be very careful.”

He grunted. “Don’t worry —” the suggestion of a sneer — “I shan’t implicate Space Command....” He shot her a glance. “Are you ordering me to take care of this personally?”

Servalan’s mouth had tightened. “You may deal with it however you please, provided you do so swiftly and discreetly!”

He’d look into the matter later tonight. The man was bound to have a few useful enemies. These inconvenient locals always did. Travis moved forward to join her at the hand-rail. A sharp nod indicated the monitors in front of them. “What about the prisoner I was to observe?”

In those cells not flagged as empty the occupants could be glimpsed, many already curled up or stretched out under the covers, a few still sitting in the angle of the wall or on the bunk’s edge, slumped and staring blankly into space; preparing each in his own way to face the monotony of the coming night. Far above, on the planet’s surface and even under the sheltering Dome, it was long since dusk. Down here, where surveillance never ceased, light existed in order that those held here should be seen, rather than that they might see. The hours ahead would be hours of darkness in name alone.

Many of the prisoners showed the tell-tale pallor of the long-term inmate. None looked vigorous enough to be any kind of threat. At the foot of the screens, a single line of text summarised the crime and sentence for each cell. Travis read off the dreary litany, his lip curling.

“Political dissident, fifteen years. Assault, two years. Tax evasion, five years. Murder with provocation, five years. Murder premeditated, six years. Agitator, seven years. Attempted sabotage, five years....” He glanced up at the Supreme Commander. “So which is the woman you brought back?”

“Lanuv? Cell HS-07. This one.” In her right hand, Servalan had been toying with a small silvery controller; now she laid it down on the rail with precision and tapped out a single three-key command. In the front wall of the gallery, a full-size viewscreen flickered violently — once, twice — and came to life. “She’s been under continuous observation now for more than twenty-four hours. A fascinating case, psychologically, I understand... but given the circumstances, remarkably obstinate.”

It was the same cramped cell view as all the others; the same minimal plumbing, the same thin covers on the same cantilevered bed, the same disorienting ambient light. Whatever extra safeguards high-security status might supply from the outside, it was clear that it provided no extra privilege for those within — and at first glance the young woman huddled on the bunk, staring straight in front of her, was no different from the hundred others in the main cell block.

It was the eyes that betrayed her. The flat, wide stare held nothing of the resigned inertia in the eyes of those others. There was fear and desperation there, yes, still vivid and new — but beyond that, like a sickening taint, was something else. Something that should have been alien to him, as to any other sane man; something that jolted out from the recent memory-tampered past, from those days a few weeks since when the surgeons had worked to mend the circuits of his hand and the therapists had been sent to ‘retrain’ his mind. He’d seen that same image reflected back in the curve of overhead instruments and in the lenses of those who bent over him, binding him down strapped and helpless. He knew, none better, the meaning behind the nightmare taint that betokened an intellect on the verge of abdicating the sole rule of its owner. He’d glimpsed it last in the mirrored depths of his own remaining eye.

Hard on the heels of that unwelcome recognition came another. The uniform she wore was crumpled and dirty, any insignia hidden by the arms that clutched each other tightly; but the cut and colour were familiar. Whatever else it might be, it was not the standard prison smock of Insecution blue.

“That’s a Federation uniform — civilian pilot....” Surprise, and the unwanted, thrust-down tug of sympathy, meant that his voice came out more abruptly than he’d intended, harsh even to his own ears. “The woman’s one of ours!”

“Oh yes — a graduate of the Federation Space Academy, no less.” There was a glint of mocking amusement in the sidelong flicker of Servalan’s eyes that set Travis’ teeth on edge. She had never for a moment let slip any overt reference to his background; but she could hardly be unaware of the glaring absence of the Space Academy in the pedigree of his own officer’s commission. Her eyes were narrowed now, assessing. “Why? Does it make a difference?”

“No. No difference....” No other answer was possible. He had owed Maryatt; he owed nothing to this young woman. The surgeon was dead, and death could not be repaid.

His mouth hardened. “She’s had the usual treatment, I take it?”

“Not quite.” The Supreme Commander pressed another key on the controller, and the viewscreen image died. She swung round to face him, silhouetted in the sudden dark. “No sleep, of course. No food, and as yet no drink. Frequent but irregular interrogation sessions; but for the moment, nothing more... basic. As a potential psychological study, she has enormous possibilities. I should prefer her to be kept relatively intact.”

Travis frowned. “Any standard interrogation drug —”

“Interrogation, Travis, is not quite the aim.” For a moment she seemed almost to hesitate; then he caught the gleam of light on the datadisc she held out for him to take. “I suggest you acquaint yourself with the relevant details of the case.” Their hands met, briefly. Her nails were cold and curved like the carapace of an insect. “And Travis... the information is strictly confidential, of course.”

“Of course.”

* * *

It took him perhaps five minutes to run the disc through the reader in the duty cubicle. There was little enough on it. Servalan’s idea of ‘relevant details’, no doubt — meaning the minimum she thought she could get away with. The Service might have less cause to complain about results if they could bring themselves to give the men on the ground the information they needed to do their job; but some things never changed.

He found Servalan watching the prisoner again when he came out, her lips curved in a slight smile. The woman on the viewscreen did not appear to have moved. By the looks of her, it was a long time since she had moved at all.

“Can you do it?” The Supreme Commander did not trouble herself to spare him a glance.

Travis had no time for her games. “Two things.” The rough words brought her attention snapping round.

“Well?” There was danger, barely leashed, behind the cold query. Travis ignored it.

“I can get you the money — or else you can have fun pulling her mind to bits. You’ll get nothing from her that way. Which do you really want?”

Servalan stared at him. “First I want Lanuv’s co-operation — naturally!”

“You’ll have it. Varro’s entire estate to your personal account. Agreed?”

“Very well. And the second thing?”

“I want a free hand in this. No consequences and no reprisals, on myself or any of those under my command, whatever action I have to take. I’ll get you the results — you leave the rest to me. Agreed?”

“Agreed... but I warn you, Travis, those results had better be worth it. Lanuv is a very valuable property.”

“I’ll make sure you get full value,” Travis said softly, watching the viewscreen. “Every last drop....”

The Supreme Commander would get what she had asked for, nothing more, nothing less. As to the rest — his face was a hard mask — as to the rest, well, there would be a choice. Perhaps for the first time.


	34. Debt to a Dead Man

Even by barracks standards, the air in the cell was rank; damp with the scent of stale bodies and sweating walls, and the less definable taint of old fear. Travis stiffened in instinctive distaste as the door opened.

The scent of battle, and even of its aftermath, was somehow different. Thick, charred, foul and meaty, it was a stench he knew well enough in all its manifestations — the smell of life spilled in all its sickening vitality. The prison-reek was the smell of communal life gone sour. It was a thin, clinging odour that leached away pride and hope and respect and all that made a man human. In battle one could forget oneself. In prison, there was no escape.

The creature that crouched, rigid, on the bed might once have been a Federation officer. Travis stopped short just inside the door and surveyed her coldly as the heavy panel slid shut and locked behind him. According to her service record, Lanuv had the history of neither an outstanding officer nor a reliable one, and twenty-four hours’ confinement and interrogation were hardly enough to justify the condition she was in. Throughout her entire career, she had given no sign of understanding the duty she owed to herself and to others; now to all appearances she had given up altogether.

It began to look after all as if he might be wasting his time. The swimming stab of pain behind his eye came again as his jaw clenched, leaving him for a moment off-balance and blind, and his patience snapped.

“Get up.” He caught the young woman by one hunched shoulder, dragging her to one side, forcing her to react. “Get to your feet.” He let her see his face hard with contempt, watching her as she obeyed him with a hint of clumsy insolence. “At attention, ke Lanuv!”

“I’ll tell you nothing.” A mumble at first, gathering to a weak thread of defiance. “Nothing, do you hear me? Not my father or my mother —”

“I’m not interested in your parents, pilot.” Travis cut harshly across her words. “I couldn’t give an armourer’s twist for your pathetic family life.”

“You think you’re clever, but it won’t work. I know what you want like all the rest....” She was swaying on her feet, hair lank, eyes sunken and bruised in a swollen face, but he noted she wasn’t as broken as she’d tried to make out. Not entirely stupid, either. He’d served with troopers like that; later had them under his command. Lazy, yes — but they worked on it, had it down to a fine art. Knew exactly how far they could go.

She hadn’t made even a token attempt to stand to attention, for example. He let it pass, staring at her deliberately in silence until her eyes wavered in the first trace of doubt. His own stance was parade-ground straight. “Listen to me, ke Lanuv. Just why do you think you’re here? What were you told?”

“During an unexpected rebel counter-attack a direct skull shot caused loss of consciousness after which I was referred for precautionary psychiatric treatment.” It might as well have been the toneless repetition of a computer, flat with disbelief. “Only it’s plain enough this is no hospital — not even the loony kind. And I know what I saw and what I heard, and what I... did. My crew must have heard, too.” She tried to moisten dry lips, meeting his stare with a certain challenge of her own. “So they didn’t die in that convenient counter-attack, did they? And I’m not a ‘guest’ here, not even a patient. Just a prisoner, kept alive until I crack!”

“There was no counter-attack. The rest of your crew were executed. The soldiers who brought you back were killed in their turn. Apart from the Supreme Commander, you are the only remaining witness to what took place.” He let her have the brutal truth — it was more than anyone else had given her — and saw her flinch from it with new understanding.

“Why me? What does she want?”

She wants to pull your mind to pieces, Pilot Officer. She wants everything you hide out up there in the open; everything you care about, every loyalty you’ve ever known. She wants to touch the raw nerves and watch you twitch. And when she has tired of all that — why, then she may even let you die.

None of that could be said, of course. By the look in her face Lanuv had guessed at some of it long since for herself; and there was the hidden camera eye on them both. But even if things had been different — if they had been unobserved, if his very life had depended upon it — such words were not to be voiced. To the Supreme Commander’s own face he would question her actions without a qualm; in the presence of a junior officer it was unthinkable even to hint at doing so.

Instead, he gave the young woman the other reason. The answer to the real question behind the one she had asked: not ‘What does she want?’ but ‘Why am I still alive?’ It was an answer that began, in its turn, with a question.

“How much do you know about the Federation legal system?”

She stared at him. “As much as most people. Enough to keep the law — or try not to get caught. There’s always some loophole they can use to pull you in if they really want to, everyone knows that. What am I supposed to have done?”

“As Principal of the Academy,” Travis said levelly, “Andra Varro was a very wealthy man; and he had no direct heirs. What happens to the possessions of such a man after he is dead — or flees the Federation?”

“The Administration gets them, of course, for ‘redistribution’. And they’re never seen again.”

She misunderstood the warning in the glare he shot her. There was an edge of hysteria in her laugh. “Oh, let’s stop pretending, Space Commander. We both know it’s just a toss-up whether I get killed off for being in the wrong place in the wrong time before I go quietly out of my mind. I’ll tell the truth if I feel like it — about the Administration, or the Supreme Commander, or anything else. What have I got left to lose?”

For a moment Travis could have strangled her one-handed. Of all the times to pick for a display of token bravado.... And he’d been warned. Her disciplinary record showed one ill-judged comment after another, enough to break even a civilian pilot.

All covered up and smoothed over. Even the Supreme Commander couldn’t have kept it up for ever; but Lanuv had lasted long enough to play the part she’d been groomed for. Now she’d have to learn, and learn fast. No more cover-ups — if she lived.

“That was your last chance, pilot. One more word of treason and I leave.”

Her jaw dropped. “And why should I care?”

For the first time, Travis smiled, grimly. “Because, Officer ke Lanuv, I am probably the only commander within three systems with the authority to protect you now — and undoubtedly the only one with any intention to try.” And let Servalan, listening, make of that what she would. This little fool had left him no choice but to show his hand here and now, before she could condemn herself out of her own mouth.

“Why would you do that? What do you want?” He could see in her eyes that she only half-believed him, if that. It was about the first sign of sense she’d shown so far.

“I want you to give Supreme Commander Servalan everything you own.”

Flat disbelief. “A few hundred credits’ back-pay and a cabin-ful of clothes?” She glanced round the cell, down at herself. “All this — for _that_?”

“Andra Varro was a very wealthy man....” Travis said again, softly, and watched his meaning finally sink in.

“No!” Her voice rose, cracked at its peak. “No. I don’t believe it. He couldn’t have — he _daren’t_ —”

“It was very carefully done. Legally foolproof.” Cleverness of that kind was not something Travis cared for. His tone held a contemptuous edge. “Months before the warrant was issued for Varro’s arrest, he had already set aside in trust over a million credits in case of his death — in your name. The Administration got everything else; but there was more than a million they couldn’t touch, through you, or through him. Not until he was finally proven dead.”

“I don’t want it.” She was shivering, as if cold. Her voice shook. “I don’t want any of it!”

“You won’t get it. But it saved your life anyway.” Hardly what Varro had intended... but then it was his own daughter who’d killed him. Hated him all her life; met him, and killed him.

The thought reminded him of the parents he’d never known, and Travis’ face hardened. Traitors, both of them. Purged for ‘anti-Federation activities’ — along with every other related adult of that generation. The dark-haired, wary little boy had learned almost before he could talk that his family were not to be mentioned. Doors had closed to him throughout society. Better to have been born a Beta-grade than to carry his father’s tainted Alpha name.

Grimly, adult before his years, he had set himself to live it down. He’d enlisted in Space Command. Worked his way up. There would be no question of _his_ loyalty. No lenience towards those who betrayed the Federation. Nothing that could be used to hint at secret, inherited sympathies....

He’d given his life to the Federation. There had been a woman, once. A brief registered bond. Even a child, Aymel; a boy. It hadn’t lasted. None of those who replaced her had lasted even as long. The Service came first, always.

 _He_ was Travis now. Space Commander Travis. There had been other plots — other purges — other names dragged through the dust. His father was forgotten and his name his own. He’d won. And he’d killed his father a hundred times: in every deserter, every mutineer, every rebel — until Blake. Oh, he knew what it was to hate. He knew what it was to blind yourself with hate.

“That money saved your life, pilot,” he told her again sharply as she tried to shake her head. “It makes you just valuable enough... to keep.”

“To keep?” It came out on a high half-sob of laughter. “Sweet gem-shards, what’s the point of that? Why not just kill me off?”

The last word died in a choking gasp as Travis’ hands flashed out to tighten around her neck. “If I killed you now —” he shook her, savagely — “if I killed you now, the Administration would reclaim every credit you own, Varro’s money and the rest. And what good do you think that would be to the Supreme Commander?”

The young officer almost fell as he released his grip, all the wild laughter shocked out of her, and with a sigh he slid a hard arm round her shoulders to keep her on her feet. “Now do you see?”

Lanuv pulled away from his hold as if it burned her, one hand going instinctively to her throat. She stood, swaying a little, staring at him. “Oh, I see all right. Servalan gets it before I die or the Administration gets it after — and the only choice I get is the ‘when’ of the dying part. The longer I keep the money, the longer I keep breathing.... I’m the ‘last witness’, remember? The moment the cash goes, I die like the rest!”

“You wouldn’t hold out for long.” The flat certainty in Travis’ tone held more chill than any menace. “They’d have to keep you fairly undamaged to convince the banking cartel; but there are ways.”

“‘They’? And just what are _you_ offering me?” Her voice shook. “A merciful release?”

“A way out of here.” He let the harsh words hang there between them for a moment, deliberately. “Survival. A future. A career.”

Lanuv’s lips parted in silence, and closed again, as her eyes widened against her will in painful hope. Grimly patient, Travis watched the struggle for trust in their depths; judged the balance of belief and desperation. He read her decision even as it was made, in the instant before her eyes fell. Her question, when it came, was the merest breath.

“How?”

Not one muscle moved in the mask of Travis’ face to betray the queer little twist of warmth that had touched him. He crushed it, ruthlessly. She had no other real choice, and they both knew it; and yet... it was a long time since anyone had turned him even a wary face of trust.

“Give me your hands. No, both of them.”

She tinted her nails, he noted with distaste, and the skin around them was raw. Surprisingly large hands, for a woman; short-fingered, with the diagonal pilot’s callus across the left. He tightened his grip, bracing her crossed wrists at breast-height between them. His gaze held hers.

“Arta ke Lanuv, you hold the current rank of Pilot Officer as certified by the Civil Administration, assigned to the science cruiser _Gergovia_.”

An uncertain nod, amended on his glare to a barely-audible ‘Yes’.

He took a breath. “By Article 13 of the Federation Armed Services Act, date code G-96, any officer in Space Command, holding more than two years’ seniority in a rank of Vice-Captain or above, may compulsorily recruit into military service officers or crewmen trained in space-flight from a civilian vessel without compensation if, by his judgment, such recruitment is necessary for the continued operation of his ship or the proper completion of his general orders. Verbal notification of said Article and administration, in the proper form, of the Combined Services Oath shall be deemed to constitute recruitment under the meaning of said Act.”

It was known as ‘reading-in’. Given that formal recital, Space Commanders could — and did, in times of war — strip a luxury liner down to a skeleton crew to re-man warships, or pluck specialists into Space Command from Administration vessels to fill out the roster for a dangerous expedition at Service pay, with no prospect of a return to their former billet at the end of the voyage. Unless they could prove gross misjudgement on the part of the officer concerned — and rely on influential friends in high places — there could be no appeal save outright bribery, and bribes, once handed over, had a tendency to be conveniently forgotten. Recruitment was a field officer’s prerogative and not even the Supreme Commander could gainsay his choice.

Time to administer the Oath.... The young officer was staring up at him, more than a little shell-shocked. Her arms, trembling with the effort of keeping her wrists extended, had begun to drag down on his own. He jerked them up. “Now repeat after me, ke Lanuv....”

The Oath, fortunately, was not a long one; nor, in this day and age, was it legally binding. Before they had reached the end his own shoulders were aching from the effort of holding Lanuv on her feet, and not even the most generous legal opinion could have described her responses as anything but incoherent. He got an arm round her just in time to guide her collapse to a sitting position on the bed rather than onto the floor.

“Here. Drink this.” He uncapped the water-flask he’d brought, unhooking the clip from his uniform belt, and thrust it into her hands. “Not so fast!” The water would be warm by now, with the campaign-taint of metal from the flask; but she’d managed to half-choke herself on the first eager mouthful.

He let her sip at it for a few moments more, watching the colour begin to come back into her face. The young recovered quickly. Food, water, and a few hours’ sleep and she’d do.

“Listen to me.” His voice was hard, controlled. “Since the day you entered the Academy you’ve been protected from reality. First Varro, then Servalan: you’ve got away with everything from failing your finals to desertion — but it all ends here. From now on, if you draw an officer’s pay then you take an officer’s duties. You obey my orders, you don’t question them and you don’t hesitate. You wear regulation uniform and you call me ‘sir’. You stand or fall on what skills you’ve got, just like the rest of us... and you can’t count on any more second chances. Understood?”

“Yes.” It was barely more than a whisper. “Sir.”

“All right. I’m taking you into Space Command with a nominal rank of lieutenant. In practice you answer directly to me, and to me only. Is that clear?” He did not wait for an answer. “You’ll be quartered for tonight with the rest of the Federation detachment in the main barracks in the Third Urban Zone. I expect you to clean yourself up, get a proper uniform and report to the administration block at 0800 hours tomorrow. Ask for Space Commander Travis.” He turned to the door, tapped in the security code and waited for the second click of the remote override as the guard outside checked the visual. The slab slid open. In the doorway, he glanced back, allowing himself a brief, wintry smile.

“Get up, Lieutenant. You’re a free woman.”

* * *

“And am I to take it that you intend to include her in the expedition tomorrow?” the Supreme Commander said sharply, looking up from her desk.

Travis had hardly expected her to look with favour upon his release of her prisoner; but neither had he expected to be called back to account for himself like some clumsy cadet. Varro’s estate was hers — or would be as soon as he got Lanuv’s face and voiceprint on the credit transfer tomorrow morning — and that was precisely what he had promised. He had told her so, coldly, standing stark and unmoved in the great white expanse of the office to which she had summoned him. Results she had demanded, and results she had. The means of obtaining them had been left entirely up to him.

Despite the mollifying prospect of over a million forthcoming credits, however, Servalan did not have to like it; and she had made it very clear that she did not. For all Travis’ confident, half-scornful façade, they both knew that with just one false step on his part it would become no longer a question of Lanuv’s continued future, but of his own. An assurance of ‘no reprisals’, on the lips of the Supreme Commander, carried exactly as much weight as she chose to allow it.

“I’ll need a second officer in any case.” Travis gave her back stare for stare. “The promised troops are barely adequate. Every recorded operation against the dissident bases in those mountains has failed —”

“Simply because they could never find them.” One slim finger tapped the screen of the black detector unit that lay on the surface of the desk between them, and Servalan smiled. “The dissidents took the bait, Travis. We know exactly where they are.”

Travis nodded. “I’ve checked on the aerial surveys. There’s a suitable landing site just to the west of those co-ordinates. We’ll set down there, find the entrance, and clear out the whole set-up. If there’s as little resistance as you claim —”

“They will be in no state to fight. I expect prisoners, not casualties. This is to be a mopping-up operation.”

“I also checked the tacticians’ original report on Insecution.” A moment’s pause. “A lightning raid up into the hills wasn’t in the plan, Servalan. What happened to that scheme for drugging them into surrender?”

“Elegant — but dangerously complex, and too slow.” Beneath Servalan’s habitual poise, her eyes were hard. “Too many things have gone wrong already... and the political situation here is not developing as expected. It is no longer a question of making a weak government appear magnanimous. A swift, effective strike now would establish a fresh sense of the Federation’s power at a pivotal point in the negotiations. Your arrival makes it possible.”

It was what he would have planned himself from the start, after all. Why waste time, once you’d pinned down an elusive opponent? If Central Security wanted a few live resisters for a show trial or interrogation, they could just take what was left. There were always a handful of survivors.

Still, better not to tread on their toes if you could help it. Both hands on the edge of the desk, he leaned forward. “I assume you’ve informed Central Security about the change of plan?”

“The responsibility for that is entirely mine.” The cold tone that meant she had no intention of discussing the matter further. Her voice sharpened. “And I suggest you take the opportunity of this expedition to dispose of your new ...lieutenant ...before Central Security get here. A stray shot in the fighting should be very simple to arrange....” And if he would not, then she would. Travis’ jaw clenched.

“You’re wasting your time. The last thing ke Lanuv’s likely to talk about is Varro, let alone whatever went on up in that pass — or didn’t your psychologists even get through to that much?” He leaned further forward, halfway across the great sweep of the desk, features intent on the woman who faced him. The Supreme Commander’s mouth was tight with anger, but she made no move to stop him. He pressed the momentary advantage.

“She was with the alien Cally. She may know something. When I get out there, I want that edge over Blake!”

“Blake. Of course.” The sudden curve of amused toleration on her lips stung like a blow to the face. Why else, after all, could a Federation officer possibly baulk at sacrificing his own men to safeguard the political reputation of his superior?

Servalan leaned back in her seat, looking up at him. Her smile widened. “Do you still seriously imagine that Blake will be up in the mountains tomorrow waiting for you?”

“If Blake left any trace behind on this planet, I’ll find it — and I’ll find him.” Grim-faced, Travis ignored her baiting. “The woman goes with me. Alive.”

For a second there was no sound but his own breathing; then, with a tiny shrug, the Supreme Commander conceded the point. “Very well. But Blake or no Blake, your priority is to clean out that rebels’ nest, Travis — _fast_.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Travis said tightly, straightening up. He took a step back from the desk, falling automatically into parade stance. “And now, Supreme Commander, if I have your permission to return to my preparations... we may have some chance of an early start.”

Instinct and long training kept the harsh cast of his features from any hint that could betray satisfaction or relief to her eyes. He had won Lanuv a chance; but the young woman would be better off away from here, out of reach of Servalan and Central Security both. There would be openings for a junior officer in the Eighth Fleet on active service, and under Samor’s command she could make a life for herself in the Fleet if she chose. Tomorrow would be soon enough to see how she shaped up in the field. Meanwhile — the twisted ghost of a smile — best to leave while he was still ahead. He barely waited for Servalan’s dismissal.

But there was one thing, after all, that required her attention. Halfway to the door, he turned. Their eyes met.

“Yes?” The Supreme Commander’s query was sharp.

Travis chose his words slowly. “Late tonight, about an hour from now, a call will be put through to this suite direct from the lower city. The caller promises valuable information if you meet him. You suspect a trap. You send Venn.”

“I see. And my suspicions are — tragically — confirmed.”

“He never reaches the meeting-place.” Half a shrug. “A street attack. The Intelligence Corps are not popular in that Quarter. The killers are never exposed.”

Easy enough to arrange, in a city where Federation credits were contraband and the labour grades were allowed far too much leisure for the government to be able to keep them properly docile. None of these old colonies had any real control over their population by Federation standards. The days of independence from Earth were over. It was time for the Known Worlds to reunite. The future, for them, lay within the Terran Federation.


	35. Come Together

The klaxon cut through the warm-scented Mangombe of Yana’s dream like the current through a live circuit. Instinct brought her coiling up and out of her cocooned bedding, one hand reaching for the grab-rail, as she swung herself down over the side of the bunk almost before she was awake. Shivering, she palmed open her locker with a curse, clawed last night’s clothes out from the tangle at the back, and hopped on one leg, made clumsy by haste, as she dragged the trousers up over the tight half-breeches and undertunic she’d slept in. Time enough to dress properly later — she sat down heavily on the edge of the lower bunk, pulling at her boots — on a raider ship, the first and only rule of a general alert was to get up to the bridge as soon as possible.

Ilse, in the lower bunk behind her, groaned and dug an indignant knee into Yana as she leaned back to tug at the other boot. “Get your bony behind off me, bristle-head!”

Yana elbowed her accurately in return without looking round, and scrambled to her feet just as the alert siren cut off. She grabbed a handful of the younger woman’s showy blonde mane and yanked hard, ignoring Ilse’s agonised yelp.

“Long hair — short wit, _we_ say.” A flash of teeth in the dark face. She tugged again, forcing Ilse to sit up or be scalped. “That was a general alert, not a shift-change, and you know it. Better get that pretty yellow head of yours up on the bridge before the Old Man comes down to haul you out of bed himself — or take my word, you’ll regret it!”

With that parting shot, she was out of the door and running. Maybe Jak did have a weakness for blondes — but she wouldn’t forgive him Ilse in a hurry. The plump, pop-eyed gunner tech knew her stuff when it came to handling the ship’s highly-illegal weapons array, Yana had to admit, but she was the laziest, most slovenly shipmate alive. She’d never once pulled her weight since the day Jak had sprung her on the rest of the crew as old Torvik’s replacement, with the pretty, pouting blonde clinging shamelessly to his arm. Torvik had been well-liked enough — at least until he’d grabbed his chance on Beta Fornax and taken off with the ship’s kitty and every valuable item that hadn’t been physically nailed down — but no-one cared much for Ilse.

By the time Yana reached the upper deck, the bridge lights were on and all the boards were powered up. The other two were already in their places as she ducked a trailing loop of cable, breathless, and grabbed at a power conduit to swerve her headlong progress. She ignored Jak’s glare and slid past stocky Ruald at the main controls to reach her own cramped flight position, slapping aside the hopeful hand that reached for its usual sly pinch.

Ruald was grinning. She turned her back pointedly, running swift fingers over the scanner board where a dozen indicator lights were blinking at her like the table-dancers’ costumes in a low-town bar.

This close to the cratered surface of the outer moonlet, none of the proximity sensors could be relied on. She flicked through the signal display manually, checking each source and killing the indicator as it was confirmed. Six... seven... eight ships in the Federation flotilla orbiting the planet below them. A small haulier tug climbing out of the main spaceport beyond towards a waiting freighter with its bulky pods. A low-altitude shuttle in the distance, barely clearing the atmosphere and almost occulted by the other moon, itself on the verge of disappearing behind Insecution’s horizon. Nothing in any of those looked worth sounding the general alert to bring the whole crew to the bridge....

A breathy squeal behind her marked Ilse’s belated arrival. The _Onora_ wasn’t actually under fire; probably too much to hope that this once the little blonde had ‘overslept’ one time too many. Ilse could talk her way out of anything.

Sure enough, a playful slap from Jak’s meaty hand and the sound of a giggle marked Ilse’s forgiveness. Yana scowled, muscles bunching across bare shoulders under the scarred dark skin, and swung her seat round to give the weapons tech the full benefit of her glare. Ilse had evidently taken the time to pull on rather more clothes than her cabinmate; but her casual disarray contrived to give the exact opposite impression. She looked smug as ever and thoroughly pleased with herself.

Yana drew breath for a barb to puncture that creamy self-confidence. In the corner of her eye the last screen of data flicked up, and she glanced briefly back at the display, her fingers already moving automatically to cancel it. A moment later she had frozen in recognition, Ilse forgotten. It was _big_... and it was coming in _fast_....

“— and Yana will tell us all why we are here — yes?” Jak’s growl made her jump.

“Kerr Avon’s ship — got to be.” She was staring at the diagnostics on the screen. What sort of pilot did the man have, to slip a spacecraft that size up under the _Onora_ ’s nose? Last time — well, last time they hadn’t been sure what to expect. She’d been scanning for the signal, not the ship.

But this time — there could be no doubt about it. The design parameters were almost off the scale in half-a-dozen directions. That craft had to be one of a kind — once scanned you’d never mistake it for anything else — and it ought to have been setting off alarms all through the system for the last two hours. Instead, it had ghosted its way in, like a raalbeast moving through the brush with silent grace that made its sheer swaying mass almost unbelievable.

This was no browsing raalbeast, though. This was a predator; and by her scans, it had teeth. The pilot who’d plotted that course was at least as good as Ruald — and whatever she thought of him, Ruald was one of the best she’d known. It wasn’t the Federation they’d be dodging now when Avon got that cargo on board.... For the first time she could remember, the cold thought came to her that the _Onora_ was overmatched. She shook it off.

“Avon? You sure?” Jak was demanding.

Yana shrugged. “Same ship. What else do _you_ make of it?”

She leaned back around the edge of the nav-array, craning like the others to judge his shifting expression despite the web of connections that obscured her view. Which way would he jump? Still time to pull out... but there were too many credits riding on this one. And Nils, at the other end in Blackport, to face down. No clue in those tiny eyes, as usual, to what Jak was thinking; but Yana could guess at his decision well enough.

One hand had crept up to scratch absently behind his ear. “Any signal yet from that ship?” he shot in her direction.

Yana shook her head, barely even glancing over at the comm board where the lights flickered a constant dim amber. Federation sub-space signals from the fleet below were threaded faintly through by the thin broadcast of the outer system beacon; on the electro-magnetic spectrum, sleeting radiation from the neighbouring star all but drowned out the unshielded buzz that flickered between the cities on the planet’s surface. Nothing unusual, nothing abnormal — nothing aimed at them.

She’d expected nothing. By all she’d seen so far, Kerr Avon was careful to a fault. The last thing he’d want right now was attention drawn to the _Onora_. When you planned to cheat on your shipmates, better not to broadcast the fact.

“ — and keep it _quiet_!” Jak had worked his way in beside Ruald. His sudden bellow at the smaller man sounded almost in her ear. “You get the timing right or I feed you to that shuttle motor myself — backwards!”

“I can slip the shuttle through — no sweat. You teach me my job, captain, I teach you yours.” Ruald’s voice was as calm as ever. He brushed flaxen-pale hair out of his eyes with a jerk of his head at Yana. “Why send Ilse to handle him? Why not sweet teeth’n’claws here?” He tipped Yana a broad wink as she bristled.

“Captain wants the man softened up, Ruald,” Ilse called from her own side of the bridge, “ — not tied down!”

Yana joined in the general laugh, shrugging. Sooner Ilse than her, cramped in that narrow cockpit with Ruald’s sour scent and his wandering hands.... Herself, she’d never had the looks for diplomacy, nor any taste for it either. This Avon could just take them all as he found them — and if he had any sense he’d know better than to trust any of them an inch, Ilse included.

Herself included, come to that. She grinned again, leaning out to watch the pilot disappear through the hatch towards the shuttle lock in Ilse’s wake. Ruald’s task to slip the shuttle through the orbit window unseen; her own to pick up Avon’s signal and guide them in on the beam.... And if Kerr Avon came up with the goods, why then — he might just be her ticket out of here, away from the lot of them. Her grin widened. What was trust worth, when weighted against _that_?

* * *

Long shadows streamed across Insecution’s plains in the early light, every struggling tuft or gentle rise edged in black. It was cold, still, but the sun’s slanting rays held promise of warmth to come, after the chill of the long night. Life stirred.

Down in shallow river-gullies and in the lee of the leafless thickets, delicate hooked fronds unfurled, and wary browsers nosed them aside in favour of safer nourishment. Now and then, a white flash from further out on the grasslands betrayed the position of a _myanka_ as it startled, poised quivering on long stilt-legs to flee from some half-perceived danger, with stubby tail held high; while in the distance the rest of the scattered herd froze in response, until, reassured by silence, the slender necks dipped once more at last to graze.

Grey-furred wings curved briefly far above, caught by the sun. With the first thermals the _malochishka_ was already aloft in search of carrion. Live prey had been scarce, of late; but riper pickings were easy to find.

The big female glided southwards in slow sweeps, the lizard-slits of her eyes dilated almost to full circle as she scanned the patchwork shadows below. She let the currents take her further and further out, as if unaware that she had strayed beyond the edge of her established range; but her senses were alert for any hint of challenge in the empty circle of sky. Circling for long moments, she turned, undecided, as the swift movement on the horizon caught her eye.

Speed and size alike confused her instincts. Not one of her own kind — not the upstart young male, sole survivor of last season’s hatchlings, who had dared to challenge her all too often of late — but was it a threat? The booming passage of the humans’ bright metal scoutships had been a familiar part of her world since she herself was a damp-furred hatchling. This was bigger — a dozen times bigger — and it did not shine... yet it darted low over the ground with the same uncanny speed....

With a harsh cry of alarm, the _malochishka_ wheeled and stooped for cover, even the dizzying speed of her dive put to shame by the remorseless onset of the intruder. The troop carrier flashed past in a silent rush some miles to the east and was gone. Behind it, the plains were left barren as every creature froze into hiding from the deafening roar that rumbled in its wake.

When the last echo had rolled into silence, the great scavenger rose heavily into the air in her turn, beating her way back into the safety of her own domain in the teeth of the wind. The _malochishka_ had lost any taste for confrontation, at least for this day. Let her offspring keep this territory, then, if he could. There were better gleanings and safer skies to be found elsewhere.

Inside the narrow command cabin, Lanuv shivered again, trying hard not to rub at her aching eyes. After a moment she gave in and let her eyelids close briefly. She needed a stim-patch — Novozim, Cantrophane, even a regulation-grade stimulant would have helped — but she’d grit her teeth until she passed out on her feet sooner than let Travis guess. She was _not_ an addict. She never had been, and she was not now.

The stiff new uniform bit painfully into the side of her throat as her head sank, and she pulled herself awake with a lurch, glancing instinctively to her right. But if the Space Commander had noticed her lapse, she could detect no sign. Long legs stretched out across the compartment, he was staring down at his boots with his chin sunk on his breast, his expression all but hidden by the dull black moulding that marred the side of his face. His mouth was set in the half-ghost of a sneer that might have been mere habit. She could not even be certain that he even remembered she was there.

His comments of that morning were still burning in her ears. She had tried — she’d really tried, for the first time in over a year — to turn herself out to half-remembered Academy standards, with every fastening adjusted on the close-fitting new uniform; to hold herself smartly to attention; to move and obey with an almost painful precision. She cared very much for this Travis’ good opinion, she had discovered.

One moment under Travis’ casual, contemptuous glance, when she reported to the administration block as ordered, had been enough to strip away all her military pretensions. In the silence that followed as he passed back across the table, one by one, the meagre possessions that had been taken from her when she first awoke in the cell all those nightmare hours earlier, every non-regulation aspect of her appearance — from her hands to her hair to the hem of her trailing coat — seemed to have become miserably self-evident under the Space Commander’s single remorseless eye.

Last of all, the familiar grey pill-case was sent spinning into the centre of the table between them with a flick of his gloved hand. Instinctively Lanuv started to reach for it, her face relaxing into relief, but a glare from Travis froze her where she stood.

“Once an addict, always an addict.” His voice was icy. “I lost over half the men in my first command at the time of the second Lo Maile revolt. My old Section Leader had a stim-patch habit. When the rebels cut our lines, his supply started to run low. His orders were to stay put — but his judgement was gone. He tried to break through, back to the rest of the unit... to the depot and its stores.”

His mouth tightened. “They never had a chance. The natives knew every inch of the terrain. The whole section was slaughtered — garotted or blinded, even those who surrendered. A dozen men made it through, and the Section Leader was one of them.” A moment’s pause, as memory flickered in his face. “I shot him myself.”

Lanuv drew a shaky breath, and bit her lip. “But I —”

She followed the direction of his gaze. Her hand was still frozen in mid-air. To her horror, she found that it was shaking slightly.

She snatched the hand back hastily, fingers clenching, as Travis’ lip curled. “Take it, Lieutenant.” His left hand, stiffly extended, indicated the pill-case on the table between them.

She stared at him in disbelief, hesitating, as he touched the gaudy ring on his forefinger in an impatient gesture; his lip lifted further, verging on a snarl. “That was an order, ke Lanuv. Take it!”

Flinching, Lanuv reached out in blind haste to obey. As her fingers touched the edge of the slim grey case, there was a searing flash.

“Officers under my command stay off the stimulants,” Travis said softly, flexing his black-gloved hand. “Understood?” Deliberately, he raked together the few uncharred remnants, fingers closing around the shards with crushing, inhuman strength and precision.

Lanuv nodded, swallowing hard. The after-tang of the energy discharge was still harsh in her mouth. “Sir, I—”

His voice cut across hers without effort. “In less than an hour, I have orders to leave for the mountains with two sections of troops. I’m taking you as second in command, ke Lanuv.” His tone was as harsh as ever. A grim smile as her eyes widened. “This is your chance. The Service takes care of its own — remember that.”

Those were almost the last words he had spoken to her directly. Throughout the whole dizzingly-swift business at the banking cartel, where the Supreme Commander’s warrant opened all doors — ID scan, retina scan, authorization, all were flashed through without question from the tiny local office under the guidance of the suave clerk at the processing centre half a Sector away — throughout the disciplined chaos that was the assembly and loading of two sections of troops and a full hover-pallet of equipment at the main exit lock on the west side of the city — he had spared her only a few terse phrases of command or correction. She was sure he’d been watching her the whole time, though, even when his attention seemed to be elsewhere; throw the new recruit in at the deep end, see how she coped, maybe? Well, she’d coped. Mostly.

The Section Leader had done almost all the actual work, but she’d managed to come up with the right orders at the right moment; after all, the business of lading was something she _did_ know, from her days on the _P-23_ — Her mind jerked away from that memory as if it had been stung. She couldn’t afford memories. Not now. Not if she was to survive. Travis had been right. If you wanted to stay sane, you had to find a new life — a new future — a new place to belong.

She bit her lip, stealing another glance at the harsh, shuttered face beside her. And after twenty years in Space Command... would she be as scarred? As ruthless? There was no pity in that face for incompetence or human error; no mercy towards enemies or traitors. Not a face to like. Not a face she would ever have thought she could trust — yet, somehow, a grim rock that held its way through the drifting field of uncharted betrayal: not safe, no, not safe at all, but whether you chose to dash yourself against it or cling to it for dear life, it would not crumble beneath you, nor deviate one inch from its intended course. ‘The Service takes care of its own,’ he had told her. Travis was the one fixed point she had left.

* * *

After the deep shadow of the overhang, the sunlight on the snow on the opposite slopes of the little valley was almost blinding. Gan halted, blinking, while his snowsuit visor readjusted to the light levels, and leaned against the edge of the rock face to catch his breath. Unbelievably, he was actually too hot.

Insecution on a still, sunny morning was almost unrecognisable as the same planet across whose surface they had struggled in the dusk barely two days before. After a lifetime in the drab corridors of Earth, the changing moods of other worlds never failed to take his breath away. The sky was impossibly high, impossibly blue, in an endless shading of ice-colour which the numbered recognition charts they’d drilled him through by rote at school had left him no name to describe.

Snow was white, they’d taught him. Frozen crystals like the constant icy fur the Delta storemen scraped from the ducts in the lower levels. They hadn’t taught him words for the colour of snow under sunlight, for the gold and the blue and the silver-bright fire... or the shapes and the shadows of the mountains high above.

They’d trained him to be part of a machine. To work and eat and sleep as he was ordered, never to think or to wonder or dream of asking why. One more small cog among the teeming masses that turned the wheels of the Federation. There was no place in a Gamma-grade’s schooling for fancy phrases or ideas; no idle time to stand and stare. Words had never come easy to him in any case. Gan took a final deep breath, gazing round almost in bemusement, and set off along the slope into the next valley.

After a moment, he toggled the communications circuit open. “Blake? Gan. No luck here. I’m going further on.”

Even with the deep-snow equipment Zen had located for them in the _Liberator_ ’s capacious stores, it was heavy going across the foot of the slope. The tensor fields held the sun-warmed surface stable enough to enable Gan to keep up a steady pace; but they had been calibrated for a smaller man, and on the softened snow the boots sank in with every churning step. He was soon breathing hard again and struggling to stay alert to his surroundings.

Not that any of them were likely to get the chance simply to stumble into the rebels’ base, of course. Avon’s magic device had pinpointed the crawler’s stolen cargo to a spot deep beneath the broken peaks over to his left, but that didn’t tell them where the entrance to the caves could be. No, the four of them were blundering round on top of a presumably sensitive area purely and simply in order to flush out the quarry. If any of them could find a cave entrance that would be a bonus; but the easiest way to tell which was the right one was to wait for the rebels to come out of it and show an interest....

Unconsciously, he glanced over his shoulder — and caught sight of a single stick-like figure on the mountain-shoulder high above, shrunken by the distance. After a moment it raised an arm and waved.

Blake or Cally, then. Not Avon. Gan smiled to himself behind the visor.

He almost waved back, but the other figure had turned to resume its arduous climb, and his own limbs were heavy with fatigue. He hoped it wasn’t Cally up there. She had been in no fit state to be toiling up that ridge — barely fit to have left the medical unit at all, let alone to be down here on the surface, fair weather or not. The _Liberator_ ’s technology could leach away bruising, repair torn flesh and even analyse and replace Auron blood, but it could not work miracles. If it had been up to Gan, Cally would have spent another day in the medical unit followed by several more in bed. He remembered the arguments, wincing.

“I don’t see why you want to go down there anyway.” Vila had been his normal tactless self. “I mean, the Federation set you up and the locals left you for dead — not what I call friendly. If you asked me, I’d wash my hands of the lot —”

“She didn’t ask you.” By that stage, even Gan’s calm temper had begun to wear ragged with worry. But trying to squash Vila was like trying to crush black-beetles as they slid from the cracks.

“You want to say ‘I told you so’ — is that it, then? You want to rub their noses in it and say ‘I really am with Blake after all’ —”

“Vila.” Cally’s voice had been very quiet, but the pain in her eyes silenced even Vila.

She had turned her back on them all; turned to Blake. “I have a right to go. To carry out the mission the Federation betrayed....”

“In memory of the dead?” Blake said very softly, frowning.

Cally had not stirred an inch. “I have a right to go.”

And, faced with the pain that had bought her that right, none of them — not Blake and not Gan, and it seemed not even Avon — had been able to bring themselves to refuse her.

It was not as if any of them would be in actual danger, Gan told himself for the twentieth time, seeking reassurance. And an unspoken sympathy with the suffering of others told him that for Cally to lie inactive now abed in her cabin — or under the regenerator — would be a torment. She would have to lay her own ghosts before she could bear to be at rest, and there was nothing they could do....

He almost stumbled as his wrist communicator chimed sharply, forcing his attention back to his surroundings.

“Gan, you’ve got company.” Blake’s voice held an edge of excitement. “Up ahead where the black rock leans out on the left-hand side of the valley — don’t look round! —”

Somewhat awkwardly, Gan transformed the beginnings of that instinctive movement into an attempt to scratch a phantom itch that somehow just happened to bring the bracelet close to his mouth. “What do you want me to do?”

“Just keep going. They’re behind the rocks — let them think they’ve got you by surprise. Defend yourself if you have to — don’t hurt anyone.” A click. “Jenna, have you got the co-ordinates?”

“I’m tracking him.” Her voice was blessedly calm and competent. “I’ll put the three of you down in a twenty-foot radius on your mark, Blake. Avon, Cally, are you ready?”

“Ready,” from Avon. Cally echoed him a second later. Then silence.

To Gan’s eyes, the black outcrop ahead loomed closer and closer. It seemed one of the hardest things he’d ever done to keep ploughing on towards it, to walk into ambush with open eyes and without a flinch. He focused on the effort itself of moving through soft snow. Forced himself to concentrate on keeping his footing for step after laborious step, head down, breathing hard, one tiny crawling figure on the vast slopes of the planet.... When the woman dropped on him from the overhang, he almost lost his balance after all.

They grappled for a moment in eerie silence as she rode his shoulders, choking him, only the gasps of her breath to be heard. Then the rest of them hit him from above, yelling, and he went down in the snow under their combined weight, still struggling to throw them off.

“That’s enough!” Blake’s voice cracked with attempted command, but Gan, face-down on the ground, felt his attackers freeze. Three strangers. Three more strangers, armed and alert, who had apparently arrived out of thin air.

With an effort he shook himself free and rolled over, drawing his own weapon reluctantly. The visor of his snowsuit had slipped over to one side, half-blinding him. After a moment’s fumbling, he peeled the whole headpiece back, blinking a little at the sudden glare. The others had already done the same.

There was a long pause as the two groups stared at each other; then one by one, in response to a nod from their leader, the ambush party pushed back bulky hoods and goggles in their turn. Beneath the shaggy hair both men and women looked gaunt and weary almost beyond belief. There were five of them.

Blake took one pace forward, attracting all eyes; deliberately lowered his gun and restored it to his belt.

“We’ve been looking for you for two days.” He took another pace forward, offering a gloved hand in greeting. “You may have heard of me. I’m Roj Blake.”

There was a sudden sharp movement among the group he faced. Glances were exchanged, but it was a pinch-faced woman who spoke, her accent making of it a single guttural sound. “ _Blake_?”

“Yes —” Cally too stepped forward, drawing attention to herself for the first time. Her eyes met those of the other woman, brown locking onto black. Her voice was low. ” — _Blake_.”

A sharp chime broke the silence. Blake answered the call, frowning. “Blake. What is it?”

“Our luck just ran out.” Jenna’s voice carried clearly across the snow. “There’s a Federation patrol ship coming up fast in low orbit. Any minute now and they’ll be in range. We’re going to have to break orbit. If you don’t come up now — “

“Wait,” Blake cut her off. He looked up — straight across at the big man who had commanded the ambush — and spread his hands. “Your choice.”

His counterpart hesitated a moment, looking from face to face, then nodded slowly. “Come with us. If you can help — we need to talk.”

* * *

“Miriam —”

Larin’s voice barely even registered through the wall of numbness that had descended on her since Mion’s death. Her own voice sounded strange to her ears, these days. She wondered if it seemed as forced and unnatural to others as it was to her.

He was hurrying after her down the tunnel. “Miriam, they’ll listen to you —”

“Politics!” She saw the young man flinch as she came to an abrupt halt and turned on him, eyes blazing. “You think I care for the quarrels of the Council? You think I care who leads and who will discuss? There is a woman dying, Larin, dying of Plague even now, who cannot last the day — and three others who follow at her heels —”

“But —” He looked shocked and shrank back, as if afraid once more of infection. “The cure — we were all dosed —”

Renewed hope. Miriam sighed. And with it had come ambition and scheming, and these petty quarrels in Council as the place of Endymion Wright lay empty for the taking; all that power that no one man had held before he came. He had brought them Federation ways — discipline, and planning... and a chain of command that led ultimately to the hands of one man. No threat to their cause in that, no, none at all, while that leader was loyal and able. But the careful system of checks and balances they had debated in so many meetings, back in the early years — it had all gone. In the end, they had trusted themselves utterly to the charismatic outsider. Now they were faced with the thought of absolute rule at the hands of one of their own.

Half the Council saw the chance to bring back the old consensus; the other half, openly or not, were picturing themselves as Wright’s replacement. Both halves looked to Miriam for support — the old guard because she had been there at the beginning, and the rest in the hopes that her approval could somehow transfer Mion’s personal mantle....

And she cared nothing. Nothing for any of them, squabbling like scavengers at a funeral bier. All she had left was her work and the cure that had cost Mion’s life in a sordid story of confusion and betrayal. She had not mentioned Mion’s daughter to the others, when the survivors came back with their dearly-bought treasure... and the news that she had guessed in the first moments from the eyes that would not meet her own. Let them believe what they liked. She would lay that secret to rest along with its owner.

No, Wright had died to bring back the Soteros — given his life heroically to save theirs. That was the story as they told it here, details already beginning to blur, and that was the only thing left that she could do for him now, the best memorial she could leave him. Her silence, and her work. Everything else was empty. It was so hard, now even to care.

She sighed again at Larin’s crestfallen expression. “Yes, we were all dosed — and will be dosed again and again, and maybe most of us will be cured. But for Soltys any help now is too late, and there are others who maybe can’t be saved —” she pointed back towards her ‘hospital’, such as it was — “and every one of those in fever at this minute needs me more than the Council do. And so you can tell them.” Miriam folded her arms, miming the medic’s indignation that once she would have been able to feel.

The young man made a helpless gesture, then seemed to give up. “They didn’t ask, Miriam. It was just that I thought....” He let his eyes fall. “What’s the use, anyway? Without Wright we’re nothing; everyone knows that. Semyon, Odarych, Motei — none of them know the Federation the way he did. None of us can plan an operation and have every last detail work. We might as well —”

“— go back in the domes and take your chances with the police?” Miriam prompted, as he paused.

After a moment’s hesitation, Larin nodded. “A lot of the younger group are saying that.”

“Yes, I have heard them.” It was not just the loss of leadership, she knew well enough. She could feel the same thing tugging beyond the edges of her own numb shield of grief; the loss itself of the will to go on. It was as if the heart had begun to drain out of all resistance on Insecution, day by day.

* * *

“Ever worked with mutoids, ke Lanuv?”

The cold and the constant mind-numbing drone had long since lulled Lanuv into what verged on an uncomfortable doze, and the last thing she’d expected was to be suddenly addressed by her uncommunicative companion. She couldn’t keep her instinctive reaction to the suggestion from her face.

But Travis only grunted in what might have been amusement. “Scared of them? Or just at the thought of them? You’ll learn.”

“Sir —”

Travis eased his shoulders back against the thin padding of the bench. He seemed to be in a mood to talk. “The Service takes most of the mutoids. You’ll meet some sooner or later. They make good subordinates — they don’t get tired, they don’t complain and they don’t try to be clever.” He flexed the fingers of his left hand briefly, as if to gauge its strength. “And half the population of the Known Worlds are scared stiff just at the sight of them. They’ll tell you anything you want to know if you just promise to keep the mutoid away from their throats...” This time it was definitely a harsh laugh. “They call them vampires — you know that?”

“Yes — sir. I —”

Herself, nine years old. Older children at the school institute, pinching the new girl when the supervisors’ backs were turned; whispers in dark corners. “Mutoids’ll get you, Lanuv. Suck your blood in the night. The last girl who had that bed, they found her in the morning — _sucked dry_!”

Huddled among the other girls, a few years later, passing dirty secrets: “You know where mutoids come from? You know why they need blood?” Stories swapped with ghoulish horror, of girls who’d gone down into the low-town zone to turn a few credits — and _never been seen again_. Until on day, on a distant planet, their friends came face to face with a cold-skinned vampire....

Lanuv swallowed. She’d studied mutoid conversion at the Academy. She’d seen mutoid guards at trading posts. She was a seasoned spacer, not a backstreet ignorant now.

“Yes, sir. I know what they say.” She cleared her throat, glancing forward. “Are there — are there mutoids in this command?”

Another sound of harsh amusement. “These are local troops, Lieutenant. Mutoids are expensive. There’ll be no mutoids on Insecution until it’s a Federated world.” He indicated the cabin roof with one hand, pointing upwards. “ _There_ are the mutoids — up there in orbit. Three pursuit ships in the Supreme Commander’s escort, and each one with a mutoid at the controls. More reliable, more acute, than any man in the Fleet.”

Lanuv must have made some sound that attracted Travis’ attention. His eyes had returned to her face, and for the first time she had the impression he was seeing her as an individual in her own right, rather than as an audience to be instructed. A sort of twisted smile had touched his lips. “You trained as a pilot, didn’t you, ke Lanuv?”

She nodded, mutely.

“And I suppose you aimed to be flying a pursuit ship one day?”

Lanuv flushed. Another nod.

Travis’ smile twisted further. “In ten years — five if we can get the conversion rate up — that dream will be gone. Every pursuit ship will have a mutoid pilot. Their reactions are faster, and it’s trained into their programming. They don’t even have to think.”

“They don’t think, and they don’t feel? Sounds like military perfection.” The old flippancy slipped past before Lanuv could guard her tongue, and she bit her lip, bracing herself. She didn’t dare to look up. She could feel Travis’ eyes burning into her.

After almost half a minute, she couldn’t bear the silence any longer. The words burst out. “So wouldn’t a mutoid make a better second-in-command?”

“Yes.” The ice in the air as Travis bit off the single word froze her to the spot.

This time the silence stretched out even longer. She slid a glance sideways, saw the muscles working in his clenched jaw, and looked hurriedly down again, her fingers twisting against each other. Her mind was running round in circles.

You’ve done it now, Lanuv. Just because the Space Commander likes to push a few theories about creatures that give you the creeps, and you can’t keep your big mouth shut.... You don’t joke with this one, and you could _see_ that — and you jewel-bright-sure don’t lose your wick and suggest he might want to get rid of you. Because a hundred to one says he’ll just take that as read....

A sudden thought brought a sickening lurch in her stomach: don’t let him give me to Servalan. Her lips were moving silently, almost without her knowledge. Anything but that. Whatever he does, don’t let him give me back to her —

“Mutoids can’t learn.” The curtly-grudged words almost made her jump out of her seat. “And they don’t have initiative.” His jaw tightened again.

“But if there’s one thing certain, ke Lanuv, it’s that you’d better do both — because you haven’t learned much yet, have you?”

“Sir.” She drew a breath, finally. Kept her head ducked. “Sir —”

The intercom flashed.

“Incoming message, Space Commander. From the patrol ship.” The disembodied voice from the cockpit sounded excited. “Sir, the _Liberator_ has been sighted in stationary orbit near the planet surface. The patrol’s going in now —”

“Blake. I knew it!” Travis’ words were so soft that Lanuv, two feet away, could barely hear them; but they were breathed with a fierce satisfaction that was almost exultant. “Open channel E14. I want a direct link.”

He leaned forward to the intercom as if to impress upon the pilot the urgency of the command. “Pursuit flight 7, this is codeword Omega. Leave formation and take co-ordinates from _Pioneer_ -class vessel on patrol flight. I repeat, this is codeword Omega. The _Liberator_ is to be destroyed....”


	36. Dissenters

Despite everything they’d been told about the nature of the resistance on Insecution, Gan still found it hard to conceal his dismay at the inside of the base. Unconsciously, he’d been picturing ducts and tunnels like the ones he knew. This place was little more than a threadwork of cracks in the rock with loose cables bundled along the ground. Equipment was set up in corners and balanced on crates in the midst of the living-quarters wherever there was room, with a few meagre light-bulbs dangling above. Everywhere, there was the squalor of a temporary encampment that had dragged on far too long.

The small group who had ambushed him outside had been ragged and unkempt, but they had at least seemed disciplined and well-prepared. Here, in the inhabited caverns, there were only the sick and the defenceless. Bearded men in their prime who moved stiffly, as if too many batons had struck home, and bore a habitual hunted look in their eyes, and a few gangly smooth-chinned youths of the type who played at sedition ‘for kicks’ and let their tongues run them into trouble beyond what they’d ever bargained for. One thin young woman, with coiled black plaits and a crease in her forehead, stooped over a viewer in a communications cubicle that was no more than two moulded panel units wedged upright by piles of rock. An old woman with the ghosts of a rabble-rouser’s fire in her eyes, betrayed by the stooped back and crippled hands that would never gesture again. Even the tell-tale sour smell of napkins and stale milk, and the dreary sound of a harassed mother with grizzling children.

However it had started, this wasn’t a resistance movement. These people were living like savages, like primitives— He’d seen the viscast of a Delta zone-clearance, once. They’d been off-planet refugees fleeing the Lanier Mutiny for safe Federation territory. Squatters. Parasites, the viscast had called them, living like animals, infesting the underbelly of the civilised levels.

He’d been shocked, he remembered uncomfortably, shocked and a little disgusted at the discovery of the dirty, cringing faces beneath his ordered world. Relieved by the bright lights and police hoses that cleared the encampment, allocating the adults to labour-planets, to be set to gainful work, separating out the children into schools to join the grade-born, to be cleaned and taught and drilled into citizenship. And then he’d been reassured by the carefully-tailored final views from the viscast, showing repaired ducting where the squatter camp had been, freshly-sprayed and quiet and above all clean....

Twenty years, Blake had said. Details of that half-forgotten viscast were coming back now with a jolt. Twenty years; some of these people had been living as refugees for _twenty years_ , crouching and hiding from cave to cave in the mountains.... Gan glanced across at the others, instinctively seeking some shared recognition of what they were seeing.

Avon looked bored, more than a little impatient, and tired — the tell-tale trace of limp he’d picked up on their last trip down to the surface was beginning to show again. Either he’d been too busy to call in at the medical bay to have it treated, or during Cally’s convalescence he’d been keeping clear for some reason.

Cally herself was still pale, though it was hard to tell in the swinging shadows of the passageway. Single bulbs flickered low down on the walls, each throwing up a brief greenish pool of light as it was passed, only for the shadows to swing round again, casting deep bars across faces and hands until they were bleached by the faint approaching glow of the next bulb. She had said nothing more since the encounter in the snow, but the memories that had haunted her eyes were overlaid now with resolution, and a watchful pity for those around her.

Blake too was frowning, one hand straying absently to his chin as he talked to Semyon, the big man who’d come along as leader of their escort. For once, though, Gan wasn’t sure Blake’s heart was in the discussion. He looked like a man with something else on his mind.

It seemed that was plain enough also to Semyon. His face had been darkening for some time, the short curls of his beard jutting furiously. Finally he swung round, bringing them all to a halt, his voice crashing into the middle of Blake’s absent-minded response: “Is it that we did not recognise this Cally, Roj Blake? We did not know that you had sent her to work among the Federation —”

Blake had the grace to look somewhat uncomfortable. But Gan could almost see him deciding further explanation was unlikely to improve matters. He shook his head and ran one hand across his eyes, rubbing at the frown. “That’s between you and her. But listen — the whole thing was a Federation trap. She knew no more than you did. The Federation sacrificed that convoy as bait; and you took it. Everything’s played into their hands from the moment this plague-strain first left the Central Science disease laboratories —”

A low protest from Cally, stung to words at last. “How can we know that, Blake? Central Science is no part of Space Command — they worked in good faith —”

Avon laughed, sharply. “Where do you think that little gift Avalon’s replica carried up to us from Fimbuldyr was created? Your naïve researchers at the Central Science Complex do exactly as they’re told. They’re weak — or corrupt — or both —”

“— the _whole thing_ has been a trap!” Blake’s voice rode over both of them. “When you thought you’d won — then when you thought you’d escaped —”

Their escort were beginning to murmur at the raised voices and at Semyon’s scowl, and Gan shifted uncomfortably. The four of them had got in here on the strength of Blake’s fame and face; but they’d learned only too well from Cally that this group was wary and unforgiving where outsiders were concerned. He didn’t know what kind of heroic reputation off-planet rumours on Insecution might have awarded the crew of the _Liberator_ , but he had a certain suspicion it might be healthier for them to avoid tarnishing that reputation too much — to put on at least the show of a united front. He watched, unhappily.

“— the whole Soteros affair,” Blake was saying again, more quietly, as the other fell silent. “I’m sorry, Semyon. I couldn’t find an easy way of saying this, and there isn’t an easy solution. Everything that’s happened — the plague in the mountains, the medical mission, the convoy attack, the capture of the samples — all of it was cold-bloodedly planned out by some tactician back at Space Command Headquarters. They _wanted_ the Soteros here. The anti-virus is laced with drugs — and it’s giving away your position every minute. If _we_ could use it to find your base, then so can anyone else.”

“But the Federation has found your ship. They know also that you are here.” The bitter lines of Semyon’s face were drawn down until his face was etched in the shadows. “How badly do they want you, Roj Blake? Is this what you bring us — an empty warning, and more enemies on your tail? Why should we not buy our lives with yours?”

He signalled to the others in the escort as a stunned Blake began to reply, cutting him short as they moved up to surround him. Gan’s fists clenched. He didn’t know how many of them he could take on his own — Semyon himself was almost Gan’s own height, and broad in the shoulder despite his grizzled beard and haggard looks — and there was no way he could have found his way back to the entrance from where they now were, but nothing could make him stand by and watch Blake hauled off without lifting a finger to stop it.

But it was Blake who caught the movement and signalled an urgent “No” with one hand, even as the bodies moving between cut them off from each other. Reluctantly, Gan obeyed.

“Avalon’s own men betrayed her to the Federation, and all they got was a blaster in the back.” Blake’s voice carried over the heads of those around him. “What makes you think my life would buy you anything more than it did them — if you were lucky? If you trust the Federation more than our help, then you’re fools — and fools wouldn’t have lasted this long.”

“No,” Semyon agreed. There was a trace of satisfaction in his grim smile, as if the _Liberator_ ’s crew had just passed some kind of test.

“So you come with me now, Blake, for the Council to hear this warning of yours.” He shot a glance around the rest of them, jerking his head to pick out two. “Mashka. Avdoty. You take these others where they can be of help. When their ship returns... we will see.”

* * *

“There’s three more ships coming up. Smaller. They’re firing!” Vila’s voice rose to a squeak that set Jenna’s teeth on edge, and a fat spark stung her right hand as her attention slipped. She rolled over, snatching her hand from under the console with a curse, and raised her head for a moment.

“Zen, evasive. Maximum thrust!”

There was a split second to throw out her free hand to anchor herself before the flight deck lurched suddenly beneath her cheek, sending her body sliding helplessly across the floor. One arm cradling her face, she held on grimly with the other as the battle computers laid in an evasive course that whipped her from side to side. What little breath she had to spare was spent on a half-voiced stream of invective.

Flight suit scraped and filthy, Jenna scrambled to her feet as the evasive manœuvres eased, snatching a glance at the main screen. Another plasma bolt launched and running, from the larger pursuit ship that had attacked them first. The other three were swinging out into attack formation, coming round for a fresh salvo from high orbit. They had her boxed in.

With a final snarled curse, Jenna abandoned her attempt at repair and flung herself back across into the pilot’s seat. The ship shuddered as the plasma bolt struck home.

“DAMAGE TO UPPER HULL,” Zen reported calmly as she swung the _Liberator_ round to climb for the last remaining gap in the closing net of attackers. “AUTO-REPAIR ACTIVATED. ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONAL.”

The ship was as responsive as ever beneath her hands. A quick glance at the instruments confirmed that banks 3–6 were at full power and the others only slightly drained. She could shrug off a dozen or more glancing hits like that one without serious damage — but their opponents only had to be lucky once. With no power to her main armament, no deflectors, and no-one on board who knew how to restore either, the _Liberator_ was nothing more than a tempting target.

She’d see Avon in hell before she’d be a _sitting_ target, though. The _Liberator_ leaped towards her tormentors as Jenna corkscrewed free then rammed back the thrust, shaving the tail-end of the triple salvo aimed at blocking her escape. The hull-tip flared, but held.

Another glance up at the main screen showed the circling lines of the planet’s gravity-well enfolding the great ship and her attackers, and the pilot set her jaw, dashing stray hair out of her eyes with the back of one hand. “They’re trying to keep us off Insecution....”

Vila stared at her. “They’re trying to _kill_ us!” Somehow he’d managed to stay in his seat through all their manœuvres, braced against the console and clinging on for dear life, but his mouth was white from the strain.

Jenna drew breath to throw back a scathing retort; then bit her lip. The pursuit ships were firing at will now, depleting their reserves with bolt after bolt, and every shot was aimed at the most vital sectors of the _Liberator_ — or where those would have been, on a Federation ship....

Vila had a point. The Federation wanted the _Liberator_ , had wanted her since the day they’d first sent a prisoner squad on board the alien derelict, to salvage her at the risk of their worthless lives — and their attacks aimed to cripple, to capture her and to board. But right now, it looked as if standing orders had just been changed. The shots coming at her now were intended not to cripple but to destroy.

“How long before they work out we can’t fire back?”

Vila’s voice spiralled upward, and Jenna, watching two of their enemies stoop confidently across the screen, allowed herself a brief, savage grin. “I think they’ve already worked it out....”

But in doing so they’d left a potential chink in the ring of fire that surrounded her. She cut velocity for a moment, preparing to accelerate round into the coming gap, and spared a moment to glance across at the weapons console again. “Ready? You’ll get one chance —”

Vila’s hands were poised over the controls, and he gave her a shaky nod. “Ready.”

* * *

Left alone in the tunnel as the footsteps of the others receded, Cally, Gan and Avon and their two guides stared at each other for a moment in silence.

Avdoty was the first to look down. Brown-bearded and short, he seemed uncertain of what to do. From the sidelong looks he’d been giving Cally, she guessed that he’d been present at the capture of the crawler; but she had no other memory of his face. He had been just one more hooded figure in the background.

But Mashka she remembered all too well. The dark, sour face stared back at them all, making a contest of it that she dared them to lose. With her heavy hood thrust back and her black hair braided around her face, she was revealed as far younger than memory had painted her — younger perhaps than Cally herself; but her features were pinched with years of bitterness and jealously-hoarded hate. Whatever enemies she might have left behind in the cities by seeking exile here, those she had carried with her had been sufficient to destroy the youth she must once have had.

In that mutual moment of recognition, outside in the sunlit valley, Cally had recognised the truth with a sinking heart. For her own part, she could bring herself to observe and pity the woman who had no time or mercy for a wounded enemy; but in Mashka’s barren world, for that ‘enemy’ then to return at Blake’s side and place Mashka herself in the wrong was an affront her counterpart would find it hard ever to forgive.

Cally dropped her eyes, allowing the other woman that much victory, at least; then looked up at Avdoty. “Where can we be of help?”

Avon cut smoothly across the man’s stumbling answer. “Cally and Gan both have skill with the sick; and I imagine here and now there’s little else of which you’re in more desperate need. Is there a hospital or isolation chamber somewhere where experience could be put to good use?” He glanced down at his wrist, then over past the bearded man’s shoulder.

Avdoty looked relieved, turning to lead them in that direction. But it was the woman who answered.

“Yes — and Miriam would take help now from the _Sevr Dan_ himself, if he had skill to give.” Her mouth tightened. The _Sevr Dan_ was clearly not high in local estimation. “And you — Avon? What use are you in a sick-room?”

“It’s not really his field,” Gan said unexpectedly, forestalling any retort. He began to smile, slowly. “But of course there are always a few tasks that don’t require a good bedside manner....”

“Quite.” Avon’s face was expressionless. His eyes left Mashka and rested briefly on Gan. “Shall we go?”

Without waiting for directions, he set off, tailed by Mashka looking thunderous. She pushed past him and swept on ahead, leaving the others to follow in their wake. Cally sighed, and hurried after Gan. She did not enjoy hostility, but at least there would be work she could do — and maybe this Miriam would make them more welcome.

“Who’s Miriam?” Gan was asking as she caught up.

“Medic.” Avdoty scratched in his beard, somewhat awkwardly. “Chief medic, since Dr Lenka... died.”

“Plague,” Cally said, but the other shook his head.

“He drank — too much.”

“And Dr Miriam?”

Another shake of the head. “No doctor. But she worked many years with Lenka. In the city, she was a supervisor on the assembly plant. That was her training, for accidents. They were the first to come here — political.”

Cally frowned. “Political?”

“The original idealists,” Avon said from in front, half-turning. “Some kind of union movement, at a guess: workers unite, one man one vote — mob rule in all its ancient glories. Government by the lowest common denominator.” He hadn’t troubled to lower his voice, and Cally could almost see Mashka’s hackles bristling.

“Avon —” She tried to make it a warning.

But Avdoty was nodding in agreement. “First, political —” he gestured up ahead — “and then the rest.” A swirling gesture encompassing himself, and a grin.

“Fugitives would turn up,” Gan said slowly, thinking it through. “Anyone with a grudge against the government — or with some grudge hanging over _them_. Anyone who needed to get out of the cities — anyone on the run —”

“Criminals and troublemakers.” Avon spelt it out pointedly. “Petty thieves. Murderers. Swindlers —”

A quiet chuckle from Gan. “You mean — people like us?”

Even Cally had to smile at Avon’s expression after that.

* * *

Blake.

The knowledge was a fiercer intoxicant in his blood than any cocktail of stimulants. He’d _known_ Blake was still here — _known_ the other would come back, for all Servalan’s words of condescension. He knew the man, knew him inside out, as only the dedicated hunter can know his prey.

He’d taken the patrol the Supreme Commander had so grudgingly granted, assigned it to his own ship — the _Pioneer_ -class that had brought him here — and briefed his pilot on what to look for. All the signs. Nothing else mattered — pirates, slavers, Blymen raids — they could all slip past; but the _Liberator_ must not get through the net. And she had not.

Blake.

Travis savoured that thought, rolling it over and over like a polished stone. This time, there would be no delay. No equivocation. This time the hunt was his own, with no concessions to Headquarters and no political ties. He no longer cared if Servalan broke him, when here and now the power to trap Blake was in his hand....

The pain from the graft stabbed behind his eye again, an almost unheeded companion now, half-blinding him for a dizzy moment so that he swayed in his seat. He thrust Lanuv’s hand from his arm almost savagely, shaking off the concern in her glance. For this too Blake would pay. For this and for every humiliation since the first.

He shot another glance at Lanuv as his perception cleared; found her staring straight ahead, wooden-faced and correct, and almost smiled. She’d do, Arta ke Lanuv — she learned fast. She’d do.

Another spasm came and went, and the first flickers of doubt began to return. Still no news from the pursuit flight. Blake’s ship had fought off multiple attacks before. If he’d miscalculated — if Blake hadn’t split his forces —

There was the massed power of the _Amritsar_ to throw into the balance, and the escort cruisers. No Space Commander’s orders alone could move that weight of metal into action; but Servalan could, with a single word. If she chose. If the whim took her.

He could go to Servalan, even now, reduce himself to beg... but then it wasn’t the _Liberator_ he wanted. It never had been. It was Blake. And he _knew_ Blake....

Travis’ hand clenched. “Channel E14, ke Lanuv. Status report.”

He watched the young lieutenant navigate her way through the comm-linkup, his face betraying nothing; held down impatience while the patrol pilot began his report. Cautious engagement — arrival of reinforcements and encirclement — enemy weapons systems knocked out in first pass — enemy deflector shields down and taking widespread hull damage — enemy now attempting breakout, pursuit flight preparing final salvo —

The voice broke off abruptly. There was a blur of shouts from the far end of the link, drowned out by a sudden, concussive break-up that sent the channel into sputtering oblivion.

Lanuv gasped. “They’ve been hit — they’re gone!”

Travis said nothing at all. Waited, grim-faced, as the static cleared and faint coughing and other sounds began to come through. Directed a glare at Lanuv, who swallowed, and managed a creditable prompt for a renewed report.

“Status stable, Commander.” But the pilot’s voice was no longer detached and routine. He broke off to cough again. “The _Liberator_ just made a break for it. She scored two direct hits with seeker missiles as we bore aft. Slight damage to Pioneer-10 — Pursuit-3 is disabled. Continuing action —”

“Disabled?” Lanuv said sharply. “What, through a force wall?” She glanced at Travis, suddenly nervous at having spoken out of turn, but he made no move. The silence on the far end of the link was confirmation enough.

“Power levels were low.” Finally. The pilot’s admission was wrung out of him as if from a stone. “I ordered force walls dropped to maintain the barrage — I assumed —”

“Don’t assume!” It was a snarl. Travis took a deep breath, forcing calm. “Force walls up — conserve power. If you can’t destroy that ship, slow her down — but at all costs keep her away from the planet and out of teleport range. Is that understood?”

He didn’t wait for a reply — there was only one that the man could possibly make. A single gesture directed Lanuv to break the connection.

So the _Liberator_ mounted seekers aft, did she? And someone on board had had the nerve to play toothless and hold off using them until the one moment they could get a clear shot. They wouldn’t pull that trick twice — but for the moment, they’d got away.

It didn’t matter. They’d been trying to stay close to the planet, and that in itself told him all he needed to know. The gamble had paid off.

“Blake.” Travis’ smile widened in triumph. “Blake’s still down there — and this time he can’t get away.”

* * *

“Shuttle’s through, anyhow.” Yana leaned back and rubbed tired eyes, trying to shift the squint. She’d been stooped over the scanner boards for too long. Her neck ached, and her arms were crawling with static. She ducked her head, massaging the nape of her neck, and worked stiff fingers on down between her shoulder-blades, along the ridges of her spine.

Jak rumbled discontent. “This better pay off.” He eased his bulk clear of the pilot’s station, shoving cables out of his path with a lack of grace that threatened to disconnect half of weapons control.

Any of them could double for any of the other bridge stations at a pinch, but Jak wasn’t half the pilot Ruald was; and when three Federation pursuit ships turned up in short order on the tail of the regular patrol, the _Onora_ had been hard put to it to dodge detection. They’d been forced to slip the shuttle early or lose the linkage altogether, and Ruald wouldn’t let the Old Man live that down in a hurry. And none of them had bargained for a sudden dog-fight in near orbit, with five ships tumbling over each other all too close for comfort, what with a Federation fleet hanging over the spaceport barely a half-orbit away. There were limits to what even full stealth could be relied on to cover — but even then more than one of the stray shots had come close to singeing the _Onora_ ’s deflectors as she tried to creep away unseen. They’d made it, undetected so far as anyone could tell — minus a shuttle into the bargain — but it was small wonder the Old Man’s patience was frayed.

Looked as if Kerr Avon had messed up big-time somewhere; and with the Federation on his heels, dogging his ship, the window of opportunity for the _Onora_ might just be shrinking beyond recall. He better come up with the goods, before his would-be partners decided to cut and run. Things weren’t looking too healthy round here.

Yana scowled down at her screens, watching the columns of data run, flexed sore shoulders, and stretched. Bare arms brushed against the nav-array and the edge of the relay comm, and a crackle of static spat. The sparks stung, and Yana snarled. “Better pay off _soon_....”

Ruald had the shuttle well into atmosphere by now, running on the edge of what her sensors could track. Ilse would be crammed in beside him, knees and elbows wedged across the cockpit; though the little gunner tech lacked the height that pressed Yana’s own long limbs against the sweating inner hull on every shuttle trip, and made the start of every shore leave an ordeal. Co-pilot was bad enough; but back in the cargo space was even more cramped — and blind. No viewports to weaken the hull, not with the risk of re-entry.

Yana rode up front on shuttle trips or not at all, and Ruald played along. No surprise there. It was the only chance he got to get his hands on her.

She slammed one fist against the swaying side of the cabinet, careless of Jak’s watchful eyes on her. Oh, she was _sick_ of this ship, fancy scans or no fancy scans. Sick of this ship and sick of the crew — and she wanted out, out, out! She’d take Kerr Avon if she could, take him for all he had — not that everyone on the ship wouldn’t be trying for the same — take him with her if she had to. He couldn’t be worse than Ruald. Couldn’t, _Mwege_ help her, be worse than Nils.

She stared at the retreating points that marked the knot of pursuit ships and their quarry’s escape; at the distant Federation fleet and the two moons flagged up automatically as grav-hazards, and the rest of the network of blue that was Arnya IV on the _Onora_ ’s systems. Flickering figures from the surface sensors tracked the shuttle on a second screen. She felt, rather than heard, Jak working his way in behind her.

“Shuttle’s running.” It was little more than a grunt of satisfaction, and Yana answered it with a grunt of her own, dubious.

“Running blind. No signal yet, no guide-beam — and too late to pull out now.” Time had begun clicking down to a limit, and they all knew it. They’d been forced to drop the shuttle early. Shuttles had to land. And still no sign from Avon as to where.

Pull this off, and he could name his own price on the deal. Botch it for them or try a double-cross — and he’d have Nils after him, Nils and Lin and any on the _Onora_ who got out of it alive.

She was running one finger along the edge of the console panel, pressing hard until the nail grew pale in the back-lit glow, as if that could boost the sensors. Force out the details as to where the cargo waited, and when — but it all came down to Kerr Avon now. And he just better not be having second thoughts....


	37. No Question of Doubt

On one level, of course, Avon knew, there was no decision to make.

He leaned over the twentieth bed, deliberately refusing to think about the dozens more that still lay beyond. The discharge from the sick man’s pitted lips had crusted across the corner of his mouth. Avon surveyed the patient with distaste, laid down the cloth he had been given to wipe the sweat from fevered brows, and began to soak the flakes of discharge free with the other cloth and basin of cleanish water with which he had been so insistently provided. He worked gently, with meticulous care, and an expression of curdled dislike that would have frozen any words of gratitude stillborn — if the recipient of his ministrations had not already been burning with fever.

Once he had cleaned and polished all the patients, Miriam would find some other menial task to occupy him, no doubt. Bedpans, probably — unless he could convince her that was a task requiring a modicum of medical skill and hence beyond his abilities. The brow-wiping had been Gan’s idea. He hoped Gan was enjoying his little joke, because when they got back on the _Liberator_ —

Only there was no decision to make, of course; there wasn’t going to _be_ a ‘back on the _Liberator_ ’. Ever since that night in Blackport he’d been playing for this, working it with every skill he had. He’d never been so close — he almost smiled at that thought, glancing at the positioning indicator on his wrist — so close. Literally.

He’d worked around everything fate could throw at him. Cally’s disappearance, Blake’s bone-headedness, Jenna’s suspicions, Gan’s ideals. He’d have to be a fool to throw it away now, on a whim.

What did the _Liberator_ hold for him, after all? Years more mayhem in Blake’s wake; years of galaxy-wide brow-wiping, punctuated by a succession of oh-so-glorious bangs. Assuming they even survived that long....

Abruptly, Avon became aware of the woman standing behind him, watching. He was wiping the cloth mechanically across the patient’s face under Miriam’s cold gaze, again and again; going through the absent motions of cleaning an encrustation that was no longer there.

Their eyes met. Avon stood up, slowly, challenging her to comment, and made his way over to the nest heap of bedding. The sick were packed so close here that he had to take care not to stumble over an outstretched hand, or knock against ragged limbs barely distinguishable from the heaped and trailing covers that he could not help trampling. It gave him at least an excuse to watch his footing rather than Miriam’s face.

He had taken some care to engineer both his presence in this ‘hospital’ — this quarantine-cave, barely worthy even of that title — and his assignment to unskilled, unimportant tasks. He did not want constant critical supervision. But — the realisation stung — above all he had no desire to be subjected to a look of scorn on the broad-cheeked face of a half-educated factory drudge.

They had got off on a poor footing from the start. Whatever he’d expected from the vaunted hospital — and having seen the rest of the ‘base’, by that stage it hadn’t been much — it was more than this.

A pair of smeared partitions, free-standing, to block off a sort of doorway between this low-roofed cave and the rest of the dark crack that wound upwards beyond. The flexible surface was brittle and crazed from repeated impact, so that the clear panels offered barely even a blurred view beyond.

And beyond — beyond, there was nothing but makeshifts and trampled ground. Less, even than the pathetic attempt at clinical rigour the partitions had implied. If there had ever been sterile equipment here, if diagnostics and packaged medication had ever co-existed with the gravel underfoot and the cold draughts that seeped in from the far corner, then all such pretence had long since been overwhelmed. The sick were huddled, untended, on piles of clothing or on the churned floor itself, disfigured faces glistening with sweat, bearded cheeks hollow and begrimed, the coiled braids of the women shorn to a ragged stubble.

This wasn’t a quarantine camp, let alone a hospital. It wasn’t even a place to die. It was a place where those still living were left to rot away — and Avon, shaken despite himself, had not scrupled for an instant to express just that.

Admittedly he hadn’t intended to do so in the chief medic’s hearing. But none of them at first had realised that the weary, ageing woman in the soiled coverall, heavy bucket balanced on her hip and greying braids wound tightly at the nape of her neck, was any kind of medic at all. It wasn’t until Miriam had dropped her burden and fixed the intruders with a steely glare (’arms akimbo’, resentful memory asserted — every inch the affronted low-grade, petty authority under threat) that he’d begun to work out who this must be.

And she looked precisely what she was, Avon told himself again, stooping to the next patient and returning a sidelong glare of his own: overworked, overweight and out of her depth. She’d had next to no experience in nursing illness, she’d admitted as much to Cally, only to learn to her disappointment that Cally’s experience was of much the same self-taught field-injury nature as her own. Of course, Cally was at least well-equipped to sympathise, as Avon had pointed out; she’d ended up nursing an entire encampment through a bout of plague over the weeks before Blake had picked her up, though it was unfortunate that in that case the patients had all died....

After that, it hadn’t been exactly difficult to get himself assigned to bucket-and-cloth duty while Cally was spirited off to consult medical texts — it seemed they did have some equipment after all, hidden away — and Gan set himself to take over from Miriam’s regular helpers so that they could snatch a few hours’ rest. And Avon had no difficulty at all in dismissing the memory of the stricken look in Cally’s eyes.

He was exactly where he’d wanted to be, after all, in a position that would allow him to slip off any time the coast was clear. Just as soon as that officious woman stopped watching him as if she thought he was going to damage her precious patients....

The inmates in this section of the hospital were supposed to have started recovering. As far as Avon was concerned, it was hard to tell the difference. He leaned over to wipe yet another bearded face, this one bearing little more than the patchy fuzz of a young boy, and received something of a shock when the eyes opened and looked straight up at him.

For a moment, youth and reluctant nurse stared at each other on the verge of muted panic, and the boy seemed about to begin a struggle to sit up; but weakness intervened, and he let himself fall back against the makeshift headrest. He tolerated the rest of Avon’s awkward ministrations without a sound, eyes closed, but it was clear he was as tense as a charged coil. Taken aback, Avon had a glimpse of himself as the locals must see him: a shaven, citified interloper, Federation-bred from his boots to the neat collar of his tunic. It was an unsought and unwelcome empathy that shook him, and he moved on hastily to his next and mercifully comatose patient.

He had no wish to think of these people as individuals — could not, in fact, afford to. Better by far to consider them _en masse_ , as a repellent task to be dispensed with as soon as was practical.... Thought leading to action, he glanced again in Miriam’s direction — and found her gone.

 _Now_. The moment of the decision he’d thought already taken jolted through him in an adrenalin rush. Cloths down. Water down. Where was Gan? Bent over that woman they said was dying. Avon wondered, briefly, if the _Liberator_ ’s immunity boosters would be enough to keep her crew from contagion themselves; dismissed the thought as quickly as it had come. There would be no problem for _him_....

No-one else was watching. Avon allowed himself one final, casual glance around, and made his way unobtrusively across the chamber, the cold breeze on his face as a guide. He had his own ideas about that crack, and if he was right — He was.

The shadowed corner opened out into a rough-edged channel that ran almost straight ahead, sloping upwards sharply. A scattering of coarse gravel gritted and slid underfoot against bare rock. It should have been absolutely dark after the first few steps, as his own body blocked out the dim glow from behind; but it was not.

He had a belt-light in his pouch, along with the other equipment he’d taken care to bring. Keeping the beam low, Avon clambered forward towards the pale glimmer up ahead. He was already almost certain of what he would find.

As things turned out, it wasn’t quite what he’d expected after all. Avon frowned and shone the beamer upward. The passageway bent suddenly, ridge-backed, and dived back under the mountains and into black silence — but at its highest point, where the passage widened, with a tumble of broken rock cleared to one side, there was indeed a pale light filtering down from above.

Leaning back, Avon put one hand out to steady himself. The cold stone was slick beneath his fingers, and the facets of rock in the chimney above him glistened with moisture where the snow-gleam caught them. It would be a tricky climb, even while still unburdened, and he knew himself to be stiff and out of condition. But it went against the grain to abandon what had seemed such a convenient route to the surface without at least an attempt.

Besides, judging by the way the loose rocks had been cleared away, this shaft had been in use at one point for more than just ventilation. Some years ago, by the looks of it, but with luck they’d left some sort of permanent handholds....

Ah. Avon smiled, unseen in the dark. And there they were. A neat row of double rungs stitched into the rock with some kind of sealant. He reached up and tried one with a sudden forceful tug. Firm enough. They’d hold for a while yet.

He set one foot in the lowest rung and swung himself up onto the wall with a jerk, beginning the climb. Easy enough, hand over hand — no harder than climbing an access shaft, though the wall was uneven and he had to swing out in places to negotiate some of the bulges in the rock. The chill was icy. Not for the first time, he regretted his snowsuit, left behind at the distant cave entrance along with the gun and powerpack.

Had it just been Blake’s high-handed notions of diplomacy that had prompted him to divest his crew of survival equipment as their hosts stripped off their own wooden goggles and heavy outer layers — or had the gesture been intended to bolster Blake’s peace of mind rather than that of the locals? Events had a habit of playing into Blake’s hands. He’d noticed that. Avon set his teeth and climbed on.

There were drifts of snow in the crevices above his head now, and the nodding, fleshy stems of some kind of native wildlife that had found refuge in the shelter of the rocks. It could have been animal, vegetable or neither; there was something peculiarly repulsive about the swollen tendrils, and he tried to avoid brushing against them. Once, he risked a glance straight up to the rim of sky overhead. Not far now.

His leg was aching again. He should have let Gan take a look at it in the medical unit while he still had the chance, he supposed. Too late now. Too late for a lot of things, regrets not least.

Compared to the _London_ — and the future prospect of a prison planet — the _Liberator_ had offered freedom. Compared to the anonymous wealth he’d always coveted, it was a cage, and a cage in the spotlight of danger at that. Blake had pulled them all into a comet’s blaze of notoriety across the galaxy. Avon still didn’t know why he’d ever followed. The man could draw you on despite yourself, until you were almost fooled into thinking you actually saw the will-o’the-wisp he was chasing....

Avon had almost been pulled in. Almost been one of them, a trusty henchman in the gallant band. He’d fooled himself he was keeping his independence with every reflex jibe, and never noticed the insidious web of trust hemming him in at Blake’s casual behest.

Then one day... he’d found himself on Aristo, sick and dizzy with radiation he’d taken on a blasted planet for Jenna Stannis’ sake, and shot at Blake’s personal enemy to save Blake’s own skin — and woken, back on the ship, to ask himself just what he was doing. Just what these others were supposed to mean to him. Like a cold dash of reality across the face.

He was _not_ Blake. He did not want to _be_ Blake. They had nothing, nothing at all in common. He owed no kind of allegiance to the man or to anyone else aboard that ship of fools. And he was getting out — free of Blake, free of the risks and demands and expectations, free of them all.

Blake needed other people; was dependent on them, clutching them round him like a comforter, milking them for support and loyalty and love. Bathing in the adoration of the masses. He saw that as leadership — as strength. Avon saw it with cold clarity as a weakness. It was not a weakness to which he personally was prepared any longer to pander.

He reached up, automatically, for the next rung. Encountered instead the icy shock of wet snow, and for an unpleasant second almost lost his balance. But there was a hard ledge of rock under the crust. He clamped aching fingers onto the edge, overruling the instinctive desire to snatch his hand away, and began to work his way cautiously over the rim of the shaft and out into the tumbled rock-field that opened out above. Both hands were chilled to the bone by the time he had scrambled up the last slope and over the ridge that marked the edge of the crack. He barely noticed. What lay beyond was perfect — more ideal for his purpose than he’d dared to let himself hope.

Avon took a few experimental steps forward, testing the depth of the snow. But he could see already that out here it was scoured thin, barely half an inch deep across the surface of a jutting, windswept plateau, like the one on which they had waited above the pass. Above his head there was an almost sheer rockface, and the shoulder of the mountain swept back along the line of peaks. Behind him, the fissure split deep into the rock along a crack that would some day send this whole outcrop crashing down into the slopes below. To either side, there was nothing but empty air. There was no vestige of shelter. In a storm, no living thing could have survived. Even now, with the welcome warmth of the sun on his face and the air almost totally still, there was the hint of a cold breeze stirring the ice-crystals at his feet.

He stood on the brink of an almost perfect oval of untouched snow, like some improbable lake engineered out from the side of the mountain. If he had designed it with his own hands, he could not have constructed a more perfect shuttle landing pad.

Avon glanced up at the segment of sky above the valley without thinking, automatically seeking for the daystar glimmer of a ship in close orbit. Olsson and his crew were up there somewhere, waiting; the secret card in his hand that Blake didn’t — couldn’t — know. Blake suspected something, that had become clear enough, and he was hardly likely to welcome what Avon had planned. But he didn’t credit Blake with the subtlety to keep his knowledge quiet if he’d found out about the _Onora_ , let alone to keep it from the rest of the crew — to let Avon run the path he’d chosen while taking quiet steps to ensure that path never reached its goal, or to leave him his freedom in the hopes that somehow, when it came to it, Avon would thus choose to turn back.... For a moment, the very act of formulating that last thought made it seem all too plausible where Blake was concerned; then he shook himself out of it with a touch of contempt. If Blake was really deluded enough to trust to the influence of Avon’s own supposed better nature, then by removing himself Avon could only be doing him a favour.

He pulled the components from his belt and moved swiftly to the side of the plateau with hardly a trace of a limp. Crouching in the sunlight, he set up the tiny beacon, aiming it southward down the valley towards the foothills of the distant plains. He hesitated for one moment at the last, barely a fraction of a second; but there was no real decision to make. One hand made a tiny movement and the point of the probe reached out, bridging the connector. The beam snapped into place.

Unseen, soundless, a hair’s-breath wide. Guiding in his new allies in a bargain for his freedom from the old, with a price that Blake himself had delivered into his keeping. He had taken nothing from the _Liberator_ , not even from the treasure room. He wanted no memories. Nothing that could be claimed by any of those on board as debt or link. He would be well rid of them — and they of him.

Rising to his feet, Avon stood staring down the valley for a long moment, not really registering what was in front of his eyes; then, with an almost visible snap of concentration, he turned on his heel and walked back across the snow. There was still the small matter of the price to be procured to finance his independence... and ‘poor but honest’ had never been an adage that held any appeal for him at all.

Five minutes later, when the rocks had forgotten the sound of his careful descent and the last of the echoes had died in the shaft, the wind-sifted snow had already begun to blur his footprints. Its parts carefully dulled to show no gleam, the beacon cast a brief blue shadow that shortened imperceptibly as the sun rose towards noon, barely visible even at close quarters; but for those with sensors foretuned to see, a betraying thread-like beam ran out across half the planet.

* * *

“Jenna, they’re still coming.” Vila was fidgeting with the spare probes on the edge of the console under which she was working. The constant soft clicking got on her nerves.

“I could let off another seeker,” he suggested again, as she made no reply. “We’ve still got three left....”

“Save it,” Jenna flung back shortly over her shoulder, glancing up. She’d left the strategy display up on the main screen. Two small pursuit ships and one larger one were circling ever closer on the _Liberator_ ’s trail, edging in sidelong like dockside alley-scum watching their chosen victim, waiting for the moment of the final rush to bring him down.... The ship shuddered again, and Jenna winced as if it were her own flesh tearing, gnawed away by the stabbing pinpricks of the plasma bolts. The attackers were getting bolder, spiralling inward. At close range they could rip the wounded giant apart.

“ _Jenna_ —” Vila’s voice was rising as he watched their pursuers closing in, but she ignored him. Hang on just that extra minute — her fingers worked feverishly on the jammed connectors — force the Federation to gamble, to guess how many missiles they had left....

“ENERGY STORE DEPLETED EIGHTY-FIVE PERCENT.” It had to be her own imagination that was putting an edge of urgency into Zen’s report, Jenna told herself, biting her lip. “BATTLE COMPUTER ANALYSIS INDICATES MAXIMUM REMAINING —”

One pursuit ship had stooped suddenly closer, darting in for the kill. Crossing the invisible line beyond which she could afford to take chances. Forcing her hand.

Jenna bit off the curse that would have wasted precious seconds, and twisted upright, clawing for handholds. “Vila!”

The explosion blossomed on the screen, shockingly close, as Vila stabbed at the button almost before she had moved, and the _Liberator_ quivered, unshielded, at the backwash. For the moment the dot that was their enemy was hidden; and then the ship appeared again, unharmed, dropping rapidly back to join its fellows at a more respectful distance.

Jenna let her breath hiss out between clenched teeth, watching. Two more seekers left. Two more warning shots to win them a brief respite.... She yanked hard on Avon’s jury-rigged connections, shoving aside the console’s spilling guts. Zen could handle the piloting until then. She’d abandoned manual control as soon as things settled down to a straight stern-chase. She was going to get back normal functioning of her ship if it was the last thing she did.

“Not even a scratch on his paintwork,” Vila was complaining, staring at his receding target.

“Saving power for the force walls and waiting for recharge,” Jenna said grimly. “That last shot of yours didn’t even shake him.”

A pity; it had been a direct hit, much better than the two glancing impacts he’d scored on unprepared ships as the _Liberator_ had made her break for it over Insecution. But she’d always known they’d only have the one chance to take their enemies by surprise, and it had been a tricky double shot at best. For all his nerves and protestations, Vila had pulled it off. He usually did. Sometimes she thought that was the one reason she put up with him.

A moment’s silence.

“They’re catching up again.” Vila broke in on her concentration, panic barely under control. “Why can’t we just speed up? We can outrun them, you know we can — anyone would think you _wanted_ them on our tail —”

“We can’t outrun them.” Jenna gave a final, vindictive, yank just as the flight deck shifted slightly beneath her — another ranging shot from behind, one corner of her mind registered automatically — and landed heavily on the base of her spine as something deep within within the console abruptly gave way. _Not_ the joint she’d been so carefully weakening. She clamped her free hand to the bruised portion of her anatomy, and swore.

“We can’t?” Vila’s face dawned afresh, moon-like, over the console edge as she glared up from a prone position. His expression veered all too clearly between concern, bewilderment and an almost hysterical grin. “Um, Jenna, just what are you _doing_ — ?”

Jenna pulled herself back to a crouch and began investigating the damage, jaw set. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that in your long career as a thief you’ve ever hot-wired a spaceship?”

Silence. She glanced up, frowning, to find Vila staring at the oncoming ships again. His face had drained into a sort of sick fascination.

Jenna took a breath; then turned away, almost savagely, to catch up a handful of probes. She prodded at the torn connection, running the laser down it to trigger the contact sealant... then let it fall, considering. One thing she had established in her attempts to bypass Avon’s detector linkage was just how deep into the ship’s systems it ran — and how fragile. If she simply cross-wired _here_ and _here_... any attempt at triggering the blasters would probably blow the whole lot. But then, if it did, they’d get the force-wall back. And, once the auto-repair got to work, their main weaponry.

She didn’t think Avon was likely to be very happy about having his fancy tinkering burned back to basics, though. A smile touched Jenna’s lips. On second thoughts, that settled it. No decision to make, really.

She stood up to face Vila, smoothing her tunic down over her hips. “We can’t outrun them, because the power banks are drained.” Bluntly. “Right now it’s all we can do to keep enough power to the auto-repair. If we keep running, they’re going to wear us down.” A breath. She smiled at him sweetly. “So... we’re going to ditch Avon’s detectors, turn round, and reduce the lot of them to space-dust.”

And as Vila’s jaw began to drop, she swung round, raising her voice to command pitch. “Radiation flare shield, Zen. Clear neutron blaster circuits!”

As Zen confirmed the familiar sequence, she moved deliberately back to the edge of the flight deck and retrieved a couple of emergency breathers, tossing one across to the weapons console. “Keep that handy. You might need it in a minute.” She broke the seal on her own breather and slung it round her neck, bracing herself.

“Fire control on automatic. Cut main drive. Full power to main blasters on bank 3.” Gambling the last of their reserves... Jenna waited a moment.

“CONFIRMED.”

“Activate!”

The explosion itself was almost soundless, but Jenna would have sworn she heard the sizzle of outraged circuits all the way back into the bowels of the ship. She hoped, with a sudden lurch in the pit of her stomach, that nothing else vital had been hooked into that particular loop. Too late now.... The smoke from the console threatened to fill the whole chamber with volatile organoplastics, and she grabbed for her breather, scrambling past Vila, who’d already sought refuge in the depths of his, to reach Gan’s station on the far side of the controls.

From there she rerouted ventilation hastily, isolating the flight deck and increasing maximum venting. That had been a little more dramatic than she’d intended. According to the breather’s readout, at least one of the compounds in the sooty vapour was potentially human-lethal — _thank you, Avon_ ; she pinpointed the origin of the new contaminant drily — and the last thing any of them wanted was to have it hanging round in the bilges.

The smoke began to clear, and she moved cautiously down to the front of the console structure to assess the results. A quick glance up at the main screen, which had barely flickered, showed their pursuers beginning, cautiously, to move in. Steeling herself, Jenna deliberately turned her back and crouched down to look up into the console’s blackened interior.

Soot sifted down. She took the small hand-vac from the open toolkit beside the probes, and applied it, wincing. There wasn’t much left of Avon’s delicate linkage. She only hoped the _Liberator_ ’s original systems had proved more robust.

“Was that supposed to happen?” Vila said, muffled, through his breather while trying to look over her shoulder.

Jenna restrained the momentary urge to yank the mask off his face, and took a deep breath. “Zen, raise force wall.”

She’d simply connected the channels back in their old run from A to B. However spectacular the side-effects, it _should_ work....

The force wall hummed almost inaudibly into effect, and a gust of warm air eddied around the inside of the mask as she released the breath she’d been holding. “Damage report.”

There was a distinct lag before the reassuring chime. “REROUTING NAVIGATIONAL FUNCTIONS DUE TO SYSTEMS OVERLOAD... RECONFIGURATION COMPLETE. 30% DAMAGE TO SECONDARY SCANNER SYSTEMS. BURNOUT DETECTED IN NANOCHANNELS OF MAIN POWER CHAMBER. NEUTRON BLASTER INPUT FEED NON-OPERATIONAL. HULL MONITORS ALSO INDICATE EXTENSIVE AND CONTINUING SURFACE DAMAGE TO OUTER HULL AND TRANSDUCERS —”

Beside her, Vila swallowed. “But the auto-repair can handle it, right, Zen?”

Another pause. “CLARIFY.”

“Estimated time until auto-repair completion,” Jenna said sharply, glancing up again at the screen. So she _hadn’t_ been imagining the burnback....

“AT PRESENT RATE OF ENERGY EXPENDITURE, REGENERATION WILL BE COMPLETE IN TWENTY SEVEN MINUTES.”

Too long. Far, far too long. The pursuit ships had noticed the force wall going up, of course; she didn’t need the battle computers’ analysis to tell her that. A few more minutes’ grace, if she was lucky, while they held off to test out the _Liberator_ ’s new-found shields.... “Prioritise the neutron blasters. How long before we can get weapons on-line?”

“PRIORITY CONFIRMED. REVISED ESTIMATE: EIGHT POINT TWO ZERO MINUTES.”

That would do it — just. It would have to. Jenna watched her enemies swinging wide around the drifting _Liberator_. Barely enough reserve power left for the main drives, and every drop she used would slow the auto-repair.

The first exploratory bolt came skimming in to splash against the force wall, and a familiar light tremor ran through the deck beneath her feet as the _Liberator_ shrugged the plasma aside. No longer helpless, at least, beneath the stabbing blows — Jenna took a few quick steps, and swung round on her heel, her face lighting up with a sudden, fierce grin as she caught Vila’s eye. “We’re back in business!”

Small thanks to Avon, of course. But then he hadn’t cared what was going to happen to the _Liberator_ afterwards, had he? Oh, he hadn’t deliberately planned to have the ship destroyed, she granted him that much — he’d have been stupid not to keep a way out in case things went wrong — but keeping her battleworthy had hardly been top of his priorities.

When she’d finally wrung an account of Avon’s apparent plan and activities out of Blake on their way down to Cally’s bedside — in return for a grudgingly-given promise to play it his way for now — she hadn’t known whether to be shocked or envious. Though she hadn’t said that to Blake, obviously.

One thing about Avon, he didn’t let scruples stand in the way of a commercial opportunity — even when the goods weren’t exactly his to sell, and the payback wasn’t likely to please Blake. He should have been born a free-trader, Jenna thought, with a moment’s unwilling admiration; he had the vision and the ruthless edge. No wonder he’d taken to their raiding life so readily, for all his caution. He’d been wasting his talents on white-collar corruption, back on Dome-dwelling hidebound Earth.

He certainly hadn’t wasted the hours after Blake had dropped his bombshell, back in Blackport. No wonder he’d changed his tune. If he’d cut her in on the deal, they could have pulled the whole thing off as smooth as silk —

Only... only there was ruthless, and then there was callous; and she never wanted to find herself cold enough to think like Avon. Because while the rest of them had been worried sick about Cally, Avon had been taking the opportunity for a bolthole, and for profit. And while she wasn’t sure she cared enough about Insecution to turn down cash in hand, there was no way she would have agreed to walk out on Blake the way Avon had in mind.

For a moment, she hoped he’d actually go through with it, just so that she’d never have to take another look at that hard, self-satisfied face. It might even teach Blake not to waste his trust on those who refused to return it.... No. Jenna sighed. It wouldn’t; she knew Blake well enough for that. And in any case, there was no point lying to herself. She _had_ all Blake’s _trust_ —

She slid into her flight position, studying the strategy predictions, supplying an alternate attack plan for each one. All around them, the Federation ships slid remorselessly closer, edging in on their drifting prey. Six minutes left until they could strike back.

Jenna flicked through the programs she’d just set up, barely seeing the configurations that chased across the screen. In a moment, the _Liberator_ would be fighting for survival. She didn’t fool herself as to their chances; but at least in a space battle, all your opponents were out in the open. Right now, it was what might be happening down on Insecution that she was worried about.


	38. Alarm Bells

When the alarm went up, Blake for one was almost grateful. Something of what he felt must have shown on his face. Old Odarych tapped him on the arm as the Council broke up into shouting mayhem.

“I think this is more your style of action — yes?”

The old man jerked his head at the chaos around them, smiling, as it began to unwind under the goad of Semyon’s yells into the semblance of a coherent evacuation plan, and Blake nodded. “I was never very good at committees, I’m afraid. I don’t remember all that much about the Freedom Party, back on Earth — that was the part of my memory the Federation really worked over — but I do have a very vivid picture of sitting around in a small room, back in somebody’s apartment, trying to get everyone to pull in the same direction — and being driven almost up the wall in the process.” He gave the other man a cautious smile. ”It was all compromise and trying to smooth down colliding personalities and endless arguments of principle... and we hardly ever seemed to get anything done....“

Odarych raised an eyebrow. “And that is how you see us? Perhaps you are right. Times have been better in the Council, that is for sure... and will be better again, I hope. If we live through the hours to come.”

He began to climb to his feet, following the others, as the girl who’d brought the news dashed out to raise the alarm elsewhere, and Blake caught him by the shoulders, frowning. “You think this is it, then — the Federation? It’s serious?”

The sudden urgency must have got through. The other eyebrow went up, and the old man gave him a shrewd look. “I think that there is still more that you have not told us, Roj Blake... but yes, I am sure. I have seen the way your people look at the way we live here —” _Avon_ , Blake thought savagely, ignoring the conscience that told him Avon was far from alone in that —”and I think you mistake the surface of the life which is forced on us for a lack of skill that is not the case. If there is one thing we know, it is how to keep watch for attack.

“The assault craft has been tracked since it left the cities — our systems are better than they may seem. If it is not the Federation, then it is another attack from their lackeys who govern us. Our watchers do not sound the alarm without good reason.”

Stunned, Blake helped him to his feet, his mind reeling. He’d thought he’d known Avon, for all his scheming. The man _would_ not — would he? The old man’s eyes were uncomfortably sharp —

“What will you do?” he asked almost at random, pinned under that gaze.

“What we must, to survive. Evacuate. Miriam has fought against it for too long, but now there is no choice. Some will die — but none can be left behind.” Odarych stumbled as they crossed the floor, and squinted up at Blake as the younger man reached out to steady him. “If your people can help, I think you will find more acceptance....”

“Of course we’ll help!” Blake remembered Jenna’s message and faltered a moment. “Our ship’s out of orbit, but we’ll do everything else we can.”

He thought he saw a trace of surprise cross the other man’s face. “Then the other craft is not yours?”

“Other craft?” A lurch of mingled relief and apprehension. The blank look on his face must have been answer enough.

“A small shuttle from orbit.” Odarych was looking at him very closely now. “It is coming in almost cross-wise for landing, on a straight line course that will take it to the rocks above our heads a bare few minutes before the assault craft arrives —”

Avon. Blake didn’t know whether to curse the man or apologise for ever having suspected him. He hadn’t sold them out to the Federation — but he and the confounded _Onora_ might as well be leading their attackers to the very front door. Unconsciously, Blake had increased his pace, almost dragging the old man out into the passage. He should never have left Avon alone, even with the others there. Semyon had been right; he’d brought these people nothing but trouble, dragging betrayal in his own wake, and he had nothing now to offer them but empty words.

“It’s all right —” Somehow, he had to reassure his companion. ”I know about — this shuttle....“ Through gritted teeth.

Belatedly, he became aware that he was rushing the old man off his feet, and halted. Odarych was watching him through crinkled eyes. “I think that you may safely leave me now, Roj Blake.”

Blake blinked. “What?”

“I have travelled in these mountains for half my life. I am not yet so old that I cannot move without a helping hand.” He detached himself gently from Blake’s supporting arm. “And you I think are eager to find your people, without the encumbrance of a stranger at hand — yes?”

Blake opened his mouth, and then shut it again, faced with the bright complicity in the other man’s eyes.

“Yes,” he said instead at last, simply. “Yes, I am. Thank you, Serhy Odarych.” He touched the old man’s shoulder, briefly, and set off down the indicated passage with a fast stride that soon became a run.

“May luck go with you,” the other said softly behind him. It sounded like a blessing.

* * *

“Gan!”

Blake had slowed to a heavy trot, breathing hard. Even so, he almost collided with Gan pounding the other way. Gan caught at the wall to steady himself.

“Blake — have you heard?”

“Yes.” Blake cut him off, initial relief ebbing sharply into panic as the others failed to appear. “Where’s Avon? _Where’s Cally_?”

“Busy with the evacuation, back at the hospital.” Gan was staring at him, frowning. “I went to find you — Cally was helping Avon with some boxes —”

A sharp dread shot through Blake, tightening his throat. For a moment he could barely speak.

“You left Avon _alone with Cally_?” He hardly recognised his own voice.

Twin lines of distress had deepened in Gan’s forehead. He shook his head, helplessly. “Blake, what —”

He should have told Gan. Should have told them all from the start, and let Avon’s resentment go hang. But odds were, Avon would have called him on it openly and he’d have lost the man anyway, fractured the crew — triggered the confrontation he’d been trying desperately to avoid — and what of Insecution then? What of Cally?

The thought hurt. He grabbed at Gan’s arm, practically dragging him round back the way he had come. Thanks to his, Blake’s, scruples — what now of Cally?

Gan protested. “Blake —” The big man made a swift move, side-stepping, to block the passageway. His face was set stubborn. like a wall.

“Blake, what is going on?”

Blake struggled against him for a moment, instinctively, like a child against an obstacle beyond its strength; then let his hands fall in defeat. “Listen to me.” It was almost an appeal. “Right now there is precisely one thing left standing between Avon and the sort of fortune he has planned for through his whole life — and that is Cally of Auron. How high can you trust that obstacle to weigh, Gan? One million — two million — three? As of this moment, Avon’s time is running out — and just how long do you think we can rely on his concern for Cally’s welfare to stop him?”

Gan’s own face had drained of colour; but he clung stubbornly to one thing. “He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t hurt her, Blake. Not like that. Avon’s not a killer.”

A sudden violent memory, of the snarl on Avon’s face as he’d swung round to gun down Servalan on the beach at Aristo. Yet... he hadn’t made that shot. More, he’d tried to kill Travis on that same beach... and failed. Blake thought back over the past months, unwillingly, granting Avon his due. He’d always preferred stinging words to action; he’d never claimed otherwise. The man had been an Alpha tech, a sheltered desk-clerk, after all.

Alpha...? Blake remembered Jenna laying down covering fire on Fimbuldyr with ruthless lethality; remembered grimly men who had died under his own Alpha hands, and the charred smell of those he had shot. Remembered Cally’s calm experience in battle, and even Vila in Vargas’ temple, sickened by the wet knife in his grasp. For all his callous words, Avon had less blood on his hands than any of them.

He sighed, not meeting Gan’s eyes. “Maybe you’re right.... I hope with everything I’ve got that you’re right. That he wouldn’t hurt her... permanently.”

Gan blanched; but as Blake tried to thrust past him he blocked the way again, mutely. He ducked his head but didn’t move beneath the other man’s glare. “I think you’d better tell me the whole thing, Blake. Quickly.”

Having come to the same conclusion some time earlier, Blake surprised him by simply nodding. “All right. Come on then — quickly.”

As Gan led him hurriedly towards the hospital, he outlined everything he knew or suspected. “I don’t know how long Avon’s had this in mind. Just this last few weeks, I think. And it wasn’t until we got to Blackport that he had the chance to do anything about it — because I was stupid enough to give him details of something he could sell. Something worth a fortune; something that didn’t mean enough to any of us for the _Liberator_ to hunt him down, or at least that’s what I imagine he hoped. The Soteros itself. Wait —” as Gan, puzzled, was about to interrupt.

“It was Cally, ironically enough, who put me onto it. Cally and Orac. She’d been talking about black-market deals for the anti-virus, and during those days in space I was trying everything I could think of to trace her — to find out what had happened. I asked Orac to find out what kind of profit that shipment would make on the black market, and where — and I found out that the question wasn’t exactly hypothetical any more. I found out that the shipment had already been sold... and by whom.”

He took a breath. “It turns out it’s not difficult, you know. There are a lot of rich hypochondriacs out there, semi-senile most of them, who wouldn’t notice if you stuffed them up to the eyeballs with pacification drugs. Probably wouldn’t care even if they did know. After all, most of us in the Federation spent our whole lives dosed with suppressants. They’ve been carefully developed over a long time. They don’t do anyone any harm — not that kind of harm....”

Blake bit off the familiar rage that had begun to rise within him at the memory of those for whom he fought; subdued, acquiescent, drugged into unthinking puppets of the machine. Perhaps at first after the Atomic Wars it had truly been meant as a kindness, as the records now claimed, to allow humanity to endure the new and unbearable constrictions of life within a Dome. That was not the motivation of humanity’s rulers now.

Too easy to get led aside, dealing with individuals; with Avon, with Travis. All the destruction he had wrought — all the death and horror — would be worth nothing, far, far less than nothing, would be a black stain upon his name and his conscience for ever, if by it he could not bring down the Federation at last. If once he lost sight of that goal, then he was no better than those he fought. Worse — for they were no more than the obedient drones of a society corrupt now and rotten to its very core.

The Federation was past saving. It clawed in power for its own sake, and used it only in the abuse of yet more power. There had to be a rule that was based on trust and justice, and not on fear. Humanity had to be given the chance to think, to govern itself, if needs be to make its own mistakes. On many worlds the Federation ruled less by force than by habit — if men could just be taught to see how thin its foundations really were, to see that orders need not come from the centre, that planets could fend for themselves and ally freely with one another — that cultures could share a continent and even a city without the need of the Federation’s grim troopers to enforce a hostile peace.... If he could achieve that, then everything they had done would be worthwhile. If by a handful of deaths he could avert another Saurian Major, another massacre like Zircaster, then he would count those deaths well spent. Meanwhile... he wondered, sometimes, alone at night, if guilt was the only thing that let him keep his own humanity.

And Avon? But he knew the answer to that already. To Avon, guilt was only one more weakness. No doubt he’d schooled it out of himself long ago, along with all other human vulnerabilities such as the need for love; everything that marked a man out from a machine. That wasn’t entirely fair and Blake knew it, but just at the moment he wasn’t in a mood to make allowances for Avon.

“He fixed the whole thing up in Blackport, so far as I can make out.” Blake’s mouth tightened. “He even admitted making the enquiries, if you remember — said it might be ‘profitable’! He must have been laughing up his sleeve that whole morning, trying to blacken Cally’s name just to get us to Insecution on time, and then using her presence as bait....”

In a way that was the hardest thing to forgive. Not just the stealing from the sick, not just the walking out when Blake needed him, but the cold-blooded manipulation of the sufferings of a fellow crew-member. And Cally, of all people; the last to betray or to believe herself betrayed.

Even if Avon had had nothing to do with Cally’s disappearance and journey — and from the Auron’s whispered words, Blake had guessed at a story of doubts and deeper wounds in which the _Liberator_ ’s crew could play no part — the man had not scrupled to use it to his own profit where it suited him. It had suited him very well that night.

“He made enquiries all right. He got more than just the name of the _Gergovia_ out of that escort madam he mentioned — he got a whole list of contacts. And one of them must have been a certain Captain Nils... pirate, con-man, with a list of convictions as long as your arm — and that’s just what was down on record.” Blake’s mouth tightened further. “I don’t know what agreement they came to on the profits, but Nils was to provide the ship and Avon the cargo. The ship made its appearance on schedule — we even followed it out of Blackport for a while.”

He glanced across at Gan. “Remember the _Onora_?... Well, she’s up there and she’s waiting. And I imagine everything Avon’s done since we arrived has been aimed at getting hold of that cargo he promised. There’s a shuttle on its way at this very moment. By the time the Federation gets here it’ll all be over bar the weeping — What? Oh.”

They’d been crossing the floor of a larger cave when Gan had caught his arm to pull him to one side, towards a darker entrance that was beginning to disgorge a trickle of stumbling evacuees, many clinging to the wall for support. At Gan’s prompting the two of them plunged in against the tide, towards the hospital.

“I don’t understand,” Gan said slowly at last. “Avon’s a clever man. He knows he can’t possibly trust this captain to bring him his share. And how’s he planning to pick it up — or to spend it?”

“He isn’t.” The admission hurt, even to Gan. “That was the whole point, Gan. He’s going with them — he’s buying his way with that cargo — and he isn’t planning to come back.” Blake turned away, into the dark.

A silence. “He’s a free man, Blake.” Softly. “We all are — aren’t we?”

“Free to go?” Blake almost laughed, a bitter taste in his mouth. It was the last thing he’d expected. Gan... as always, his conscience. “I can’t afford to be that noble. Avon’s pulled us out of more holes than I’d care to admit, and whatever he thinks, I’m all too well aware of it. Without him, I’d be stranded on a dead-end planet in the back of nowhere, struggling to do anything at all. I can’t let him go, and he knows it.”

He’d never intended to let it get this far; never meant to let them all get separated. Hoped — and it seemed that there too he’d been wrong — Avon would think twice once he’d seen the reality of these people and their suffering. He’d made no plans for this moment, and now it was almost too late.

There was a brighter glow ahead of them, to one side of the passageway, and a cluster of dark figures, silhouetted in the act of emerging to join the rest. He glanced across at Gan, who nodded. “The hospital.”

“And you let Avon leave here with Cally?” Regretting the tone of that almost the moment he’d said it, Blake took an instinctive look up and down the tunnel as if he might still see them, avoiding Gan’s eyes. But the other man was shaking his head, pointing.

“Through here.”

‘Here’ turned out to be a vast low-roofed cavern peopled, for the moment, with chaos. Ten minutes earlier it might have been a hospital of sorts. Now it looked like a transit camp after the police had hit. There were groaning bodies on the floor and others perambulating — barely — towards the exit, with the aid of those little less ragged or unsteady on their feet themselves. One figure in all the tumult never moved. Her face was covered. Blake followed Gan’s gaze.

“Soltys. She died under my hands, Blake.” His eyes held mute protest against the suffering of the helpless. “She was too far gone. There was nothing I could do — nothing any of us could do, without the _Liberator_....”

“They’ll miss the anti-virus soon, if they haven’t already.” Blake forced himself to be ruthless. “Which way did he go? Where’s Avon?”

Gan pointed, silently, in the direction of a dark crack that might have been the continuation of the cavern, and Blake sighed. “All right. You stay here — help anywhere you can —”

His companion seemed ready to argue the point, but at that moment one of the women trying to form a stretcher party looked round and saw them. “Olag Gan!”

The beckoning gesture that followed was clearly intended to encompass Blake as well; but his temporary anonymity gave him the opportunity to duck out of sight and slip away, and he took full advantage of it. At least he could be certain that Gan, for one, would be out of harm’s way and free from blame....

He moved swiftly across the cavern, head low, until he reached the indicated cleft, catching up an abandoned hand-lamp from the ground as he went, and then began to run. In his pocket, a certain argument of last resort thudded painfully against his thigh with every stride. Blake was increasingly afraid that he was going to have to use it.

* * *

They moved in silence through the dark, save for the faint gritting underfoot of loose gravel against rock. Avon had said nothing for a long time, as weary as she was herself, Cally guessed, though he would never admit to it. The sound of his footsteps was uneven between the narrow walls, and it was hard, sometimes, to remember where she was and when. Beneath the mountains on cold and barren Insecution, with a pair of scudding moonlets hidden by the sun, and not deep within a sea-cut cliff at night, with a single great satellite hanging above, with a shared burden swinging between them and the trace of a limp echoing in her ears....

But there were scars in her mind that told of the days that lay between; scars where linked minds had been torn apart by savage fire, that might never heal. She did not know how to tell what damage had been done. She had not dared to try.

“My people have a saying: life will come full circle if you fight it.” She said it out loud, and caught the glimmer of Avon’s frown as he turned sharply to stare at her, sending the light-beam flickering among the cracks. After a moment, he dismissed the words with an abrupt sound of impatience, hitching up his side of the case with a jerk. Despite herself, Cally almost smiled. Humans had their own unspoken language, even if few of them were aware of it.

But the wry recognition soon faded as her isolation stole back. Life had brought her round to its echo, wrapped loyalties in a knot, as she fought every scrap of the way — and left her nested once more in the heart of where she had been, brought back aboard the refuge of the _Liberator_ with a trust she had barely deserved. There was another saying, on Auron: ‘When you try for what is right, take care who pays the cost’.

She had tried. She had truly tried to shield those who had helped her, help unasked-for, even unbidden — and even now she did not, could not see, given those same choices, what else she could have done. And if there was a cost to pay, then it had been taken from her in blood and bone.

Only she had not been alone in that. She was scarred, yes, but in all that mattered, whole. Those who had been with her, caught up in that same betrayal beyond any of their understanding; they had paid the price in full. Two boys in Federation uniform, one of them her closest link to Auron — and a woman she had begun to count her friend.

Too often the sole survivor. She knew the unreasoning guilt for what it was, and thrust it down, and turned to those who lived, and still needed her. The children of Auron clung fiercely to life, and they were never born to be alone.

Miriam she had liked from the first, despite the constraint that lay between them — the reports from the pass that had named Cally and her companions as killers of the greybeard leader, Mion Wright on whom Miriam guarded an aching silence... and Avon’s acid tongue that had won them a thin welcome at best. A dislike, needless to say, that had been mutual. Cally sighed.

In truth she doubted if he and Miriam would ever have hit it off together, even under happier conditions. The older woman, for all her rough words, had found her vocation in caring for others, while Avon — Avon, she had always suspected, went to some trouble to care as little as he could help. And in other respects they had all too much in common. He, of them all, should have been able to acknowledge that frozen dignity of grief; but he had thrust up his own cold shell in answer, and turned suddenly upon herself and Gan. She had forgotten just how much skill Avon’s words could hold to hurt.

But it was after that Miriam had warmed to her, shaking off the ghosts of the past and disappointed hopes, as if in setting himself on one side of a line Avon had somehow included his companions with Miriam and the rest of them on the other. Help was desperately needed here, and Miriam, at least, was not too proud to admit it.

They had a back room, she had discovered — or at any rate a partitioned-off sector — with a viewer and shelf after shelf of medical texts, some of the cases smeared by constant handling, but more than a few that had clearly never been read. Scanning the summary strips, she wasn’t surprised. _Tropical Diseases of the Inner Gentalis system_... _Neurosurgery of the Thalamus_... _Mammary Augmentation for the Practising Cosmetician_...

“Smugglers’ selection.” Miriam, leaning over her shoulder, had flicked that last title free of the viewer with a snort. “Lenka took whatever he could get, used what he could of it. No luxury to pick and choose, not out here. These were in his bag when he came —” she’d thumbed down three of the most worn texts — “and this is what we were trained on, back on the assembly plant.” A basic first aid manual, the clear casing scratched almost to a blur.

“And the rest?” Cally had glanced along the serried rows with a helpless sensation that was mirrored in Miriam’s own answering gaze.

“Do you think I haven’t looked, since Lenka died?” A gesture of frustration that was almost fury. “And again, since the plague? Trying to understand, trying to teach myself from what the doctor knew —”

“Trying to find out at least what was worth having?” Cally had prompted quietly.

The older woman had nodded, glimmering tears fought back once more. “But you can see for yourself, now, what use it is....” For a moment it had seemed Miriam would sweep the whole shelf to the ground, but then even the brief anger drained out of her, leaving only the tranquillised blankness that Gan, frowning, had pointed out to Cally in all too many other faces.

“Nothing I can do.” Even the woman’s body seemed to sag. “The Soteros was our last hope — and I can only guess at how to give it, how it works —”

Cold knowledge, then, of what must be done. Cally had almost gasped. For she, Cally, had _known_ , known utterly, as she had known every nerve in Amery’s body, in those minutes of linkage when she had shared with him her mind and her skills, and joined in exchange in the awareness of his.

The memory stole in suddenly from behind the stubborn wall she had thrown up in her mind against the rawness of that loss. Auron eyes shed no tears, and the mind that would have wept in their place was scarred and silent.

“I can tell you... that,” she had said instead, the words halting. Reaching back beyond her barriers for those memories had seemed, in that instant, the hardest thing she had ever done. But Amery had cared for his work, passionately, with the same ardour as the calf-love he had lavished on herself. The Soteros cargo and the knowledge she had gained through their link were all that was left now of the pale-faced boy she had rescued in Blackport — the only legacy the world would ever know. She had not been able to give him what he had wanted from her. This, at least, she could give.

“I can tell you about the Soteros,” she had said again to Miriam as her heart twisted for pity within her. “I can tell you... everything.”

It had not been that easy, of course. To share in understanding was not the same as truly to learn, and she had only the memory, now, of that knowledge, like a ghost of something once seen. Pain lay in wait behind those shields, clutching at her mind, at delicate senses and instincts seared by rupture. Pain of another kind, too, that she had equally thrust back — grief for senseless, reckless death, for a young mind and trust used and discarded. Deep-linked knowledge carried, always, while it lasted, the taste of its owner. To recall it now was to bear Amery’s image constantly before her mind’s eye, alive with a vividness only telepathic imprint could give. It was as if she had come upon the intimate possessions of the newly-dead.

She held to that bittersweet pain of regret, using it as a shield against the other hurt as she probed the damaged places, taking it as a final gift. He would not have grudged her that.

Damage was there, as she had known, and she wondered uncertainly how much of it would heal, even as her body had healed, under Gan’s care back on the _Liberator_. To be mind-crippled on Auron was to be outcast... if she had not been outcast already.

She would go back, though. A brief flaring of the old fire. She would go back regardless. Some day, when with Orac’s aid Blake had loosened the shackles of the Federation — someday soon. The memory of Amery taught her again, sharply, how much she missed the mind-touch of her own kind.

And the memories — scarcely even that... the impressions, fading traces on wounded senses — were still there. More, far more, than Miriam needed; theory that Cally herself could no longer grasp, lacking the guiding mind linked to hers. She had not even tried to sift it. She and Miriam had worked with recorder and stencil-tapes to set down every scrap of meaning, describing what she could and sketching with a stylus on the screen. Absorbed in her task, she had barely even noticed when the medic left to make her rounds and when she returned.

At first even the alarm had hardly penetrated her concentration. It was not until Miriam shook her by the shoulder that the urgency in the voices beyond the partition began to sink in. By the time she had struggled back out of the past into muzzy awareness, dazed as a child drilling at pattern-seek in the nurseries, she was alone again.

At the time, she hadn’t consciously been looking for Avon, or even Miriam. She thought it was the frozen stillness of him that had caught her eye, halted at the mouth of a dark crack — taken aback by the milling panic, as if it had woken in his absence. Her own mind aching and almost overwhelmed, she had leaned against the edge of the partition for support, grateful for the familiarity even of the ghost of annoyance on his face.

All around them, patients were being helped — and dragged — up onto their feet, shuffled off to safety in a staggering line. Avon had been set to fetch-and-carry duty, she remembered. Like it or not, he’d apparently been landed with the task of moving the precious cases of Soteros into concealment.

“Let me help —”

For an instant, she almost flinched from the rejection in his eyes; but pride or no pride, the bulky transit cases were awkward to manage alone,and after a moment he’d grudgingly conceded her a grasp on the handle. Taking up her share of the weight, Cally had followed his lead quietly into the dark.

Even at the driving pace he’d tried to set at first, it would have taken him far longer to move this many cases without her help, and within a few minutes Avon, a realist as ever, had allowed apparent resentment at her offer of aid to ebb away into their habitual teamed silence. They’d lifted and swung each load in unison, edging the burden along the narrow crack as quickly as could be managed, ducking back into the main cavern barely long enough to slip out the next case from the cache; but even so they were both soon weary and scratched, and the hospital was visibly emptier each time they returned. She wondered again how long Miriam’s people had until the Federation arrived — how far any of them would get. Avon had said nothing, though she had seen his eyes flickering with calculation and what looked like puzzlement.

This now was the last of the Soteros, at least. She hitched up her own grip on the case in turn, with a sigh, lowered her head to the final scramble, up towards the glimmer that marked their new cache at the foot of the shaft — and frowned, almost missing a step. Beside her, Avon collided heavily with her shoulder and turned, snarling, but Cally cut him off in mid-flow, gesturing in the half-light for silence.

She’d heard it even over the uneven shuffle of their own movement, but now it was quite clear. Bootsteps — heavy ones — on their back trail, and moving fast. Something was wrong.

“Move!” Avon shoved her again, hard, almost propelling her up the slope. They made it into the foot of the shaft at a stumbling run, and without ceremony Avon dumped his end of the the box and began hunting through the rubble, snatching up a jagged-looking rock. Cally dropped to a crouch to one side as Avon raised his improvised weapon. A rush of fighting tension was flooding half-healed muscles, but she caught at Avon’s arm, urging caution. “Wait —”

And then their pursuer burst from the passageway in a moment of recognition that caught them both off-balance, slamming into Avon even as she was thrust to one side. She caught at Blake’s arm. Was flung back almost blindly.

“Cally, get back — I’ll keep him off —”

She stared at him, aghast. “Blake, this is madness —”

“Have you finally gone insane?” Avon was struggling viciously, pinned against the wall. The very rocks seemed to be shaking with fury.

They _were_ shaking, she realised an instant later as the other two broke off, staring at the shaft above. The light dimmed for a second as if a shadow had fallen, and with a sinking feeling she recognised the sound. The walls around her quivered to the deep roar of the landing jets.

Avon was breathing hard, his face set in a mask. It flickered for a moment, towards something like victory. “And _now_ , Blake —”

The other man had backed off towards her, fumbling with the contents of a pocket. For a moment, she couldn’t see what he was doing; but Avon’s eyes had widened, lips drawn back. “Are you out of your _mind_?”

And then she caught a glimpse of the grenade as it left Blake’s hand, and she was rolling for cover, Avon diving the other way, Blake’s shielding weight crushing her against the wall as the corner of rock cut them off from the sight of that crumpled sphere reaching its shallow arc in the centre of the shaft and beginning to fall, Avon’s final snarling words in her ears.

“ — to kill us all? —”

Then the world caved in.


	39. Unravelling

Blake rolled over and sat up, stiffly, as the ringing in his ears began to fade. His shoulders stung from the lash of razor-shards of rock, and he could feel a sluggish trickle of blood beginning behind one ear. He reached up to dab at it cautiously, as clouds of dust sifted free from his sleeve, and began to cough.

Cally stirred at the sound and rolled to her elbow, still dazed. The hand-lamp, miraculously unbroken, had wedged itself against a crack a few yards down the tunnel and was casting deep bruises of shadow from below across the bones of her face. Blake levered himself to his feet and went to retrieve it, ignoring Avon, who was dusting himself down on the far side of the passage with a glare that could have vaporised comets. He shone the light up and down a dazzled Cally, despite her protests, checking for damage. But he’d managed to shelter her from the worst of the blast... and, mercifully, he’d otherwise arrived in time.

Cally blinked up at him for a moment, looking puzzled; then her eyes widened as memory flooded back. She shot to her feet in one coiled motion, almost snatching the lamp from his hand in passing, and disappeared back around the corner to where the glimmer of daylight had once led to the outside world. It did so no longer.

Blake followed, more slowly. Behind him, he could feel Avon’s eyes between his shoulderblades like a knife.

He’d known roughly what to expect; but even so, the scale of the devastation took him aback. Cold realisation told him he’d been lucky, very lucky, not to have brought down the whole mountain on top of the three of them and maybe the hospital too. Only the upward venting of the shaft had helped to soften the blast... before the roof had caved in. The tunnel was almost choked now with rubble back to the corner, some of it big slabs but much of it little more than unstable gravelly dust.

Cally had somehow worked her way close to what had been the centre of the chamber, only the distant flickering of the lamp bearing witness to the cracks under which she must have crept. Beside him, Avon triggered his own belt-light, scanning the still-settling rock. Somewhere beyond, where neither of them could have reached, Cally was scrabbling at rubble bare-handed, her breath echoing in harsh sobs of effort. When she emerged, empty hands grazed and bloody, a few minutes later, her face was stormy as he had rarely seen it before.

“ _Why_?” The fury in her eyes was an echo of his own rage against injustice. It shook him. “When we have come so far to help these people — when they need this so much.... And then you, Blake, for some petty human quarrel, for some _fight_ —”

She broke off as if the word choked her. For a moment her hot stare flayed both men alike, and Blake drew a breath to speak; but she was already rushing on.

“All you can do is play games with lives — and do you not know what this has already cost —” She broke off again, with a gasp that betrayed to Blake the direction of her thoughts, and his mouth tightened. Whatever had lain between her and that young Auron of hers, he had not expected it to make her unreasonable.

Not worthy, Cally. Not from you....

“Even by Blake’s standards of wanton destruction, it would seem more than a little extreme,” Avon put in coldly, as smooth as ever — as if he’d never been caught with a rock poised to smash Cally down, as if, unbelievably, he meant to bluff it out, even now — and Blake’s own temper boiled over. Cally had suffered enough to give her the right, but _Avon_ —

He swung round to face him, furious. “Were you planning to tell Cally the truth before or after you’d shipped the Soteros off to line your own pocket, Avon? Or were you just going to knock her on the head with that little stone of yours and pretend the whole thing never happened?”

“Blake....” Cally’s face drained suddenly chalk-white. Her eyes had gone to Avon instinctively, waiting for a denial. Avon didn’t even spare her a glance.

His lips had curled a little, into that thin, dangerous smile. “That ‘stone’ was for you, as it happens. If you remember, you came bursting in up here in a somewhat... precipitous manner, without an announcement. As for Cally —” his eyes flicked at last to acknowledge and dismiss her in the same movement, scanning the rubble around them with a rictus-edge of contempt — “I suppose that is the one thing for which I owe you some vestige of gratitude. You saved me the final trouble of coming to that decision myself.”

Blake didn’t look at Cally either. Right now, he wasn’t sure he could bear to.

“Oh, I think you owe me for more than that, Avon. For saving you from the life-long responsibility of being the one to betray your friends and everyone else down here into the tender mercies of the Federation for a start —”

He didn’t know what he’d expected. Scorn, maybe; a glib rebuttal of possibilities of friendship or guilt. Not that swift, blank frown, incomprehension escaping the mask. Genuine — he’d swear to it. Avon _hadn’t_ known... the one man in the base who’d missed the alarm....

Blake calculated, briefly, where Avon must have been at the time. Not far to look, not with the answer all around him; he felt his own face contract into a tight grin, utterly without humour.

“Your friends are up there now,” he told him, savagely, biting off the words. “But by now they’ll have worked out that hard on their heels are the Federation — and the only thing that’s holding up the Federation from coming straight along the access shaft you’ve so kindly pointed out for them, and down on our necks, is the amount of time it’s going to take them to clear a ton of broken rubble....”

* * *

Lanuv’s own hands itched for the controls, but she kept them locked down at her sides with an effort. She was an officer now. Her job to give the orders and see that they were done, not to waste time by getting in the way of the work.... Almost the last thing Space Commander Travis had made clear, before he’d sent her forward to the troop carrier’s nose to take direct command of the pursuit and landing — and he’d left no room for doubt that he’d meant exactly what he’d said.

Lanuv allowed herself a brief rueful grin. She didn’t think much of the future chances, somehow, for anyone who failed in what Travis saw as his idea of their duty. Not the kind of Space Commander you’d want to cross; but not the kind who’d let his men down, either. She hadn’t had a lot of choice, but she reckoned she could have done a lot worse. Could have been stuck back in that cell waiting to be bumped off and going quietly round the bend, for a start.

Anyhow, he was right. Officers didn’t get their pretty white hands dirty. They hung around on the bridge, scowling at people and telling them which way to jump... and she’d never handled a troop carrier, when it came down to it. If the truth was told, she didn’t think she could have done a better job of feathering the fat craft in on the rogue shuttle’s tail, and odds were she’d have made a complete shift-end botch of it.

So she kept her hands firmly down out of temptation’s way and did her best officer impression, hemming and hawing and glaring like old man Chu. Hard to keep that up, though — especially when she happened to catch the corner of the pilot’s eye, and got a broad wink in return that would have broken them both up into fits of laughter if it hadn’t been for the open intercom — and after a while she began to relax.

The pilot knew his job, and after Travis’ first brief flurry of orders, when the shuttle was sighted coming down ahead of them, that had sent her down to the cockpit and the pilot into a surveillance/evasion pattern to keep the newcomer craft in sight, there was little more for Lanuv to do than give the nod to the programmed course changes.

For one moment, though, hanging back too far, they’d lost the shuttlecraft on the screen into the scan-shadow of the mountains up ahead. Dived into a valley, somewhere — but which one?

Instinctively, as the pilot glanced up at her for instructions, she’d waited a fraction too long, looking round over her own shoulder at the intercom for Travis’ directions. The moment when she’d realised she was on her own — that this lieutenant was expected to make the decision — and the adrenalin rush that swamped her twenty seconds later, when the shuttle slid back onto the forward scanners and she knew she’d picked the right choice, left her shaking, ebbing down from a high that matched anything recreational she’d ever touched. The pilot flashed her up another grin as they settled back to the chase, and she managed a nod of approval — _good work, carry on_ — akin to those she’d had from her own commanders, still only half-able to believe she was really here, in charge. Maybe there was something to this officer business after all....

Not that Travis wouldn’t have taken over in a flash if she’d tried anything to push her limits, of course. Turning back to the barracks, for instance, or opening fire with the little pop-guns that were all an armoured carrier mounted. A lieutenant wasn’t much of an officer, and she’d only been learning for less than a day. She guessed well enough he’d be down here in a second to pull them out if there looked like being a real foul-up. Down here — and down on her like a ton of bricks. Lanuv swallowed. Not _that_ much comfort, then.

But she had to admit that so far Travis had been absolutely right. The shuttle _was_ acting suspiciously. Was landing in the mountains, after all. Was, by the looks of it, going to try some kind of linkup with the outlaws the expedition was after — and definitely had to be stopped. Caught on the ground, if at all possible, which was why they were currently sneaking up like this with all the discretion such a bulky craft could handle. Down in the hold the troopers, locals to a man and acclimated to native conditions, were getting suited up if necessary for a quick drop. The troop carrier could let slip its cargo in seconds....

“Seems to know where he is going,” the pilot observed, glancing over for a moment from the controls at the afterglow of the screen that tracked the lines of the shuttle’s dead-straight course. “Two course changes only; one here and one here —”

The accent was thick enough to cut with a knife, and Lanuv blinked for a moment before the sense got through. Pity about that, when he’d had such a nice smile....

But the smile showed again, and she grinned back anyway, leaning closer to squint at the screen. “He’ll have to change course in a minute, or head straight into the side of a mountain — yes, there he goes. Lucky he never seems to look back, isn’t it? Much nearer than this, and he couldn’t help but spot us if he did.”

Their quarry was right down among the peaks now, vanished into some valley between the walls of rock. He had to be making a landing of it any minute, and they couldn’t hang back any longer, risk or no risk.

Bent over his instruments in the eagerness of the chase, the pilot’s face was barely inches away from hers, the warmth of his breath brushing her cheek. Lanuv remembered suddenly that she was supposed to be an officer and straightened up to take a belated step back, as the troop carrier glided down towards the mountain-top in its turn. She swallowed, rehearsing the command, and clasped both hands behind her back.

“Take us in, pilot... now!”

And then there was no time for self-awareness, no time for anything save to hang on, braced in the angle of the cabin, as they rolled and dived down in pursuit with the heavy carrier clinging to every curve of the valley as if on a magno-track. A sloping snow-field came rushing up towards them, only to slip away beneath at the last moment as Lanuv shut her eyes, flinching. Her belly churned. No _way_ was she going to spill her guts into orbit like some ground-crawler on her first take-off....

And then they were dropping hard and fast towards the mountain, committed now to the landing-site beyond all hope of abort, and somehow, in amongst the magician’s trick of blurring hands that was required to coax the elderly boat into a safe landfall, the pilot had found a spare moment to zoom in the ground-sensors on the snow-scene below. However intent they’d been on their destination, the shuttle’s crew could scarcely help but notice their pursuers now.

It was hardly high-grade hardware, but their altitude was so low now that Lanuv was sure some at least of those frantic black dots on the grainy viewer, alongside the oval shape that was the shuttle seen from above, had to be men on the ground running back to their ship. It was going to be a close-cut thing. She took a breath, swallowing. The next few minutes might just make or break her newly-minted career.

The Space Commander would have suited up now and gone down to the hold with the rest. Her own helmet and half-visor waited in the secured rack by the cockpit door. She pulled on gloves with numbed hands, and flicked the communicator over to general broadcast. “Ke Lanuv speaking. Ready to drop on my mark — six, five, four...”

A shudder beneath her as the landing-struts extended. The motors that powered the drop door had whined into a higher gear, building power. At her elbow, the pilot had ninety percent of his attention on the controls before him that would stop them smashing into the ground; but one hand hovered ready to reach for the drop button on her command, and void their living cargo in seconds into action.

“...two, one —” The jolt as they hit rock, uncushioned by the expected drifts, sent a shockwave of adrenalin through the ship. Lanuv’s voice cracked. ”Drop!“

Travis was among those first out, instantly recognisable bare-headed — he hadn’t troubled to fit his helmet — urging on the tide that swept across the snow. But they were seconds too late.

Vapour boiled abruptly, hiding everything, as the shuttle’s main drive woke into action on full emergency thrust. Whatever rendezvous they’d come to make, her crew had somehow scraped together the split-second discipline to abandon their goals and get the hatches sealed down in time to escape. The carrier’s own armoured frame shook in the backwash as her instruments registered the takeoff, far too close for safety, tracking the smaller craft upwards in an almost vertical trajectory the Federation vessel had no hope of matching. Their prey was slipping through their very grasp.

Pulse hammering, Lanuv was on the move before the fumes outside showed even a trace of subsiding, running for the command cabin and the direct link to the pursuit ships above.

“Pioneer-10, break off action. This is an order. Break off action!”

“Order confirmed.” It was not the voice of the human pilot whom Travis had spoken to, but an emotionless alto that sent an instinctive shudder up her spine. “Authorisation?”

Bright gem-shards — Lanuv bit her lip — if the creature was going to insist on sticking to the letter of her mindless mutoid logic — “Where’s your commander? I demand to speak to your commander!”

“Officer Rothman was injured during the pursuit and is not available. The target vessel is still undestroyed. Current losses remain within acceptable parameters. Please state authorisation for termination of previous orders.”

The mutoid’s voice was passionless and unrelenting as a computer’s synthesised speech, and Lanuv bit back a desire to scream. Time was ticking away, and only those pursuit ships up on the edge of orbit offered her any chance of catching that shuttle before it escaped her grasp entirely. She didn’t know any authorisation codes — had only been thrust into this job yesterday, for crying out loud —

“Lieutenant ke Lanuv speaking for Space Commander Travis. Break off action immediately and return to orbit. All pursuit ships are to take action to intercept small shuttlecraft currently leaving atmosphere from this location, and locate mother ship on highest priority. Please confirm if understood.”

“Authorisation from Commander Travis logged and confirmed,” the voice from above said calmly. “We have target shuttle on high-altitude detectors. Breaking off action for pursuit. Pioneer-10 out.”

I did it! Lanuv realised slowly, standing alone in the narrow cabin. Blood was drumming in her ears, shaking her with its violence, and all of a sudden she was grinning all across her face, hugging herself tight with the sheer excitement of it.

I did it. The tiniest, puniest finger of the Federation’s long arm — but that finger twitched at _my_ command, reached out to stop that shuttle like an almighty hand down out of the sky.... Travis and all his men couldn’t get it in time; but I did. She hugged herself closer, child-like, feeling the buzz.

Bright gems — I just pulled rank on a mutoid. What price pursuit ship pilot _now_ , eh, Istan?

Cold water. Istan’s stricken look, out of that same rosy memory — and then, far colder, the knowledge of her death. In the wrong place at the wrong time, because she, Lanuv, had been set up as bait —

She slammed down the memories. You could go crazy, thinking like that. New life — new future — right? Right.

Lieutenant ke Lanuv straightened her shoulders, slowly, and went down to the cockpit to retrieve her helmet before rejoining her commanding officer. Travis hadn’t returned. They must have found something out there — something important enough to leave stopping the shuttle up to _her_...

* * *

“I don’t get it.” Vila was almost aggrieved. “It has to be some kind of trick. We didn’t do _that_ much damage, did we?”

It had been a hot few minutes’ work before the _Liberator_ ’s main blasters came back on line, with every hit they took draining power from the auto-repair, and there had been times when just trying to follow the whirling spots on the main screen was enough to make his insides turn decidedly queer. Nothing to do with cowardice, as he’d tried to tell an unbelieving Jenna; it had been motion sickness pure and simple. There was this thing called the middle ear.... But Jenna had told him shortly to stop looking at the screen, then, and gone on throwing the ship around with her usual alarming confidence, trying to work their way back towards the planet and block the enemy’s line of fire all at once.

She’d been right, though. Once his own console displays had come back to life, and he’d been able to concentrate on the power displays and targeting right under his nose, his stomach had started to settle down wonderfully — although that might have had something more to do with the fact that they weren’t just running any more, but finally had the chance to hit back. Back in his old life he’d never have thought he’d find himself itching to hang around and strike a blow instead of taking the chance to leg it; but then back in the Federation he’d always been small fry in comparison to those who were after him, inside the law or out of it. The _Liberator_ was a very big fish indeed.

All the same, he hadn’t been able to get off that many shots. After the damage they’d taken earlier, not to mention Jenna’s bit of hot-wiring, they just couldn’t spare the juice. They only had one set of banks left, and that was practically empty — so it didn’t make sense when the pursuit ships suddenly backed off like that.

He looked up at the main screen again as Jenna frowned. Their attackers weren’t just backing off, either. They’d turned tail at full speed, almost as if they were scared stiff.

“Too good to be true.” Jenna echoed his own thoughts. “Now if they’d made a bolt for it after that shot that rattled the lead ship, I could have swallowed that....”

“INFORMATION.” If he hadn’t known better, he could have sworn Zen’s voice was as ragged at the edges as the ship herself. “SHUTTLE NOW LEAVING ATMOSPHERE ON INTERCEPT VECTOR.”

“Where’d that come from?” Vila dived towards the controls of Cally’s vacant console, behind him, and collided painfully with Jenna, who had got there first.

“Up from the planet, obviously.” She gave him one of those looks. “What _I’d_ like to know is where it thinks it’s going....”

To his ear, her tone strongly suggested she suspected Vila himself of having something to do with it, and he was about to make an indignant denial when the pursuit ships struck.

Not at the _Liberator_. At the shuttle.

“Ouch.” Vila winced and shut his eyes involuntarily. Across the back of his closed lids there marched an all-too-vivid picture of what plasma bolts could do to the interior of an unshielded shuttle. He opened them again, hastily.

But somehow, incredibly, the little dot of light was still present on the screen, almost encircled now by its attackers, still labouring into orbit under the power of its tiny inboard drive, and Jenna’s face had taken on a very queer look indeed. “A warning shot... unless....”

She had left the monitor console and was fingering the pilot’s controls almost absently, sending the _Liberator_ round in a long cautious curve that committed them to everything and nothing. “They’re letting them run. As bait. The _Onora_ — _Avon_?”

“On that shuttle?” Vila could feel the blood drain from his face. “But why—?”

He could see the _Onora_ now, and the pursuit ships had to have seen her too. The whole loose formation was headed directly for her, the shuttle pilot running against hope for a bolt-hole, bringing remorseless pursuers on his tail. Every yard he travelled brought the Federation down more and more inexorably on the _Onora_ herself.

Jenna’s fingers were twisting together in her lap, over and over again.

“Zen, what are they transmitting?” Her voice had tightened. “I want to hear what they’re saying!”

“CONFIRMED.” A faint sound of static followed, and swelled suddenly into cacophony. “GENERAL COMMUNICATIONS INTERCEPT ACTIVE,” the computer added unnecessarily, over what sounded like several cities all talking at once.

“Just the ships, Zen,” Vila said hastily, both hands over his ears. In front of him, on the monitoring screen, the pursuit had almost closed in.

> “Drop the force shields, dam’you, Olsson!”
> 
> “Your last warning, shuttle; please stand off.”
> 
> “Jak, you double-crossing piece of dirt —” A woman’s voice, rising shrill and outraged. ”You going to pretend you don’t know _me_? You let us in, or —”
> 
> “You stand off, shuttle, or we fire.” The _Onora_ , faced with a damning fugitive, was having none of it. “Olsson speaking. This some kind of joke, Pursuit Commander? Seems to me in bad taste....”
> 
> “Captain Olsson, this is your last chance.” The cool Federation voice cut across the bluster. “Yield up the fugitives, or we will destroy both craft. You have ten seconds to comply.”
> 
> “You can’t catch your own busters planet-side, that’s not _my_ look-out,” Olsson was protesting. “Don’t you come pushing your blame off onto me....”
> 
> “So you won’t talk, Jak — then maybe we will.” Desperation carried even over the hiss of the shuttle’s transmission. “Listen here —”

Death bloomed silently on Vila’s display, at the end of a long streak that tracked the _Onora_ ’s plasma bolt. Beside him, there came the hiss of Jenna’s indrawn breath. His own mouth had gone dry.

“That was _his_ shuttle? He blew up his own shuttle?”

“Oh, it was his own shuttle all right. His own crew, his own shuttle — but they’ll never prove it, and he knows it. Not now.” Jenna reached out abruptly and cut the voice feed, as the _Onora_ ’s protestations of loyalty and assistance to the Federation drowned out the pursuit ships’ insistent questioning. Her mouth was pinched to a hard white line. “Shuttles are easy to come by, and crewmen not much dearer, not on the sort of profits that kind runs. It wasn’t the dauntless forces of the law that put me in that holding cell on my way to Cygnus Alpha, Vila. It was a stab in the back from someone I thought I was a big enough crook to handle.”

Her eyes were dark with something that might have been fury, might have been grief — wasn’t anything he was used to, not from Jenna, not at all — and he groped at a wild guess in the dark as to why, in a world that suddenly wasn’t making sense. “And Avon? _Avon_ was supposed to be on that ship?”

Down below, débris spread in a silent, drifting globe. Avon — Avon couldn’t have been there. He wouldn’t have been so _stupid_....

“ _Supposed_ to be?” Jenna’s voice rose. “It’s the last place he was supposed to be — serve him right if he was —”

She broke off suddenly on what sounded like a laugh. “I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t sit quiet in a tight place and let some Lirvikker do the talking, not Avon. No, his grand plan went wrong down there and saved his hide — for what little that’s worth to the rest of us —”

“Hadn’t we better get a bit further away from those pursuit ships?” Vila, who had deferred any hopes on making head or tail of what she was on about until a calmer moment, finally got a word in edgeways. He cringed at the look she gave him, but persevered. “Well, hadn’t we? There’s a whole Federation war fleet hanging around in this system....”

“A couple of cruisers? You wouldn’t know a war fleet if one crawled up the back of your tunic and bit you.” But Jenna sounded much more her usual self, and to his relief she had set the ship on a new course that took them out for the moment into the safety of anonymous space.

“I just hope Blake isn’t counting on being able to pull out of here in a hurry,” she added under her breath. “Right now we’ve barely got enough power to make standard by four, and that’s pushing it.”

* * *

“Easy with that sling!” His young lieutenant’s yell cracked half an octave.

The dangling lines had fouled, and the man whose task it was to keep their burden clear of the walls was signalling wildly for a halt. Travis watched with grim impatience as the sling that bore the injured man was manœuvred clear and the lines tightened again around the little winch. They had lost more than enough time already.

The trampled snow left behind by the shuttle fugitives — whoever they were, they could wait; they weren’t Blake’s people. Travis, of all men, was least likely to forget the _Liberator_ ’s thrice-bedamned teleport — had led him directly first to the beacon they’d neglected to destroy and then to the betraying shaft. When the hand-detectors showed the tell-tale signature of the transit cases directly below, he’d hardly been able to believe his luck. A quick route into the heart of the active rebel complex — the elusive goal that had escaped every effort of the local forces — and it had fallen right into the Federation’s lap. No need for complex political schemes, for poisonings and plots and planted dope; one lightning raid down into the control centre, and the whole Insecution problem would be dealt with, for good. Even the Supreme Commander could hardly refuse him her backing, after that. He’d get his flotilla back from Fleet-Warden Samor, get all the resources he needed to track Blake —

Better than that. Blake was down there, he was sure of it. His ship had been seen in the offing, his Auron had infiltrated the surface... but it was more than that. Call it hunter’s instinct. He’d always had a nose for a rebel — for a traitor — and for this one above all. Right now Blake was bottled up under those rocks, the _Liberator_ driven off or destroyed, the plans that had brought him here in disarray; and this time the rabble-rouser had meddled on one too many planets for his own good.

Travis had no illusions about Blake’s ability to pull off the unexpected, given enough warning. But this time they were going to burst in on him when the alarm had barely been raised — and finally, he’d have the chance to relive that first meeting. The way it should have been. The rabble would flee, scattering under the threat of disciplined troops. And Blake — he’d take Blake down with his own hand. Literally.

Travis had savoured the thought. Blake had been responsible for his artificial hand. How fitting that he should die by it.

But everything depended on speed, and above all on lack of warning. And by now he was all too aware that that last advantage had already been lost — had been lost, probably, since before his troops had even touched the snow.

He’d been first down the shaft in person, barely waiting for the next man to join the rope. He’d been the first to hit the bottom... barely halfway through the descent.

The loose rock had almost trapped him, shifting underfoot and then giving way abruptly to jam like a vice around his knee, all but crippling him as he wrenched himself free. It was totally unstable, unsafe to bear the slightest weight. And it was still warm from the blast that had torn it free.

The tang of those fumes, of frustration, was still acrid in his throat. Someone had blown that passage from below, blown it scant minutes before Travis himself had reached the scene. With every minute that had since elapsed, as the men worked frantically to clear the shaft, those below would have been making preparations for resistance or escape. And now one of the clumsy fools had got himself injured....

“Get him up to the ship.” Travis barely even acknowledged the unfortunate’s hobbling progress as the sling was tipped free and its cargo aided across the snow. “The rest of you — get back to work. The next man to put himself out of action through carelessness will take three weeks’ extra duty in the guard-house!”

They were a sullen, under-trained crew, more akin to a punishment parade than to the seasoned troops he’d been promised; and if these were Insecution’s finest, then it was little wonder this nest of sedition had been allowed to fester here for so long. He turned on his heel.

“How much longer, ke Lanuv?”

“Nearly through, sir. The scope says another twelve feet down to solid rock, but the bottom’s slipping away as it is — that’s how Parozyrmi got caught —” she glanced in the direction of the man now being helped into the shelter of the ship — “and I reckon in a couple of minutes we’re going to find ourselves with nothing more than a big heap and open space all around —”

Her babble quelled beneath his glare. “Thank you, Lieutenant, that will do.”

But he called her back, as she ducked her head and tried to leave. “Wait. Which of the men take best to the work?”

Lanuv looked up, frowning slightly. “Well, none of them — sir.”

That much he could have concluded for himself, and she should have known it. She swallowed, and rushed on. “They’re not trained to it and they don’t like it. A rock-lance operator could have cleared this shaft in seconds — that’s what they’re saying, sir —”

“If any of them happens to have a spare rock-lance unit concealed behind a snowdrift or two, I’d be grateful if he’d produce it...” Travis bit the last word off with a snarl as her face dissolved again behind a blur of pain. The graft seemed to smother his face like a river of fire, pouring agony through him in a blazing stream, and it was all he could do to stay on his feet. He reached, unthinkingly, for support, and felt the young lieutenant’s grip steadying his own.

A few more fits like that, and they’d all know. He couldn’t keep it quiet from Servalan much longer. He thrust away Lanuv’s grasp, swaying, and fought to focus in on the carefully-schooled blankness of her gaze. “Your job to _make_ them work, ke Lanuv, not pass on what they say —”

“Yes sir.”

“Pick yourself a working-party. Take this —” The second hand-detector, from its place on his belt.

Her eyes were opaque. Travis’ own gaze narrowed. “Recognise it?”

“No sir.”

“Tracers on the cargo the rebels captured, Lieutenant. Used as bait — expensive bait.”

“Yes sir.”

She had to know what he meant by now well enough; but she gave no sign. She had guts, did ke Lanuv. For all the mess they’d made of her, she had guts.

“Expensive, and written off to cost. Worth a fortune in credits on the black market, some might say. Enough for a senior officer to give orders... not to leave it to chance.”

Lanuv did react at that, with a sharp, uncontrolled laugh that was almost a bark. “So my f— so Varro’s estate wasn’t enough? I’m delegated to bring back the initial outlay into the bargain —”

“ _I_ have the orders.” The edge in his voice brought the junior officer up short. “That delegation is mine to make — to be carried out in the light of new circumstances, and only if the chance arises. As it does.”

He took her swiftly through the detector’s operation, demonstrated in silence the location of the signal — almost directly below and still unmoving. “You’ll take a small detachment to locate and retrieve what cases still remain, while I lead the main assault. That task completed, your detachment will follow, cleaning up any resistance. Understood?”

She nodded. “Yes sir —” at his glare.

Excited voices broke suddenly from the shaft beyond where they stood. All around, troops were running towards them, discipline disregarded. Travis restrained himself from looking round; read the answer in Lanuv’s face. A breakthrough down below. They could finally move.

The last of the work-shift were coming up now, dust-covered and stripped to their tunics despite the cold, to retrieve weapons and uniform coats and descend to the assault. A cheer greeted the last man up.

“Prisoners, ke Lanuv.” Travis added the reminder over his shoulder as an afterthought, taking his place at the head of the first squad. A gesture sent her to back-up the second. “Central Security want prisoners — not bodies.”

Not by one inflection did he betray his opinion of the practicality of such a demand. “Try to get the spymasters what they want — and the Supreme Commander what she wants....”

“Yes sir.” She knew, better than any, what those prisoners would face. No mercy in such a command. But then, from Central Security, one would hardly expect it.

The heavy equipment was assembled and ready at the edge of the shaft, the lifting-lines reattached. Travis took a deep breath. They’d lost the element of surprise. He meant to lose nothing else in this from now on.

“First squad, move out — now!”


	40. Full Circle

Avon’s face, closed and unrevealing. Expecting nothing and demanding nothing; neither forgiveness nor understanding. Her mind was scarred and her heart was dry. She could neither understand nor forgive.

He was... what he was. Had never claimed to be otherwise. If they — if she — had not wished to believe, not taken that cool self-interest for self-defence, bestowed upon him more human weaknesses than he had ever acknowledged... then the more fools they. The more fool she.

He had never claimed to care. Never shared Blake’s beliefs as she had — as even the rest, try as they might, in their hearts could not deny they had come to do. Had disclaimed, unswervingly, all interests save his own... and yet.... No children of Auron could live as Kerr Avon wished to live. From all she had learned of humanity, by all the friends she had loved, she could not believe that any human could truly do so either.

He had not defended himself; not troubled to lie. Only stood there unmoved and unmoving, indifferent beneath the storm, as Blake’s all-too-human fury poured over him. Waited, eyes half-hooded and sardonic, while Blake had turned to Cally herself in a halting attempt at comfort and at apology. Her own anger had long since left her abandoned, drained, like the false friend it was. Blake’s human warmth was all she had.

Numbed, she could only follow. Follow, as Avon had no choice but to follow, in Blake’s wake through the chaos that was a base disintegrating before their very eyes, back to bare rock and discarded débris there was no time to take along. Time... all their lives depended now on time. Every fighter, every cripple, every child beneath these mountains — her own life, and Gan’s, and Avon’s, with the Federation at the gate and the _Liberator_ out of orbit and out of call. Time that Blake had won.

Cally remembered that now, creeping back upwards through the mountains in the dark as the fighting raged below. What Blake had done... had, in the end, won them the chance so desperately needed, no matter why he had done it or how. Those few extra minutes before the Federation broke through had been enough, for those who lived here, to turn the balance.

If she had not herself seen it, she would not have believed homes, equipment, people could have disappeared so fast. Given more time, she guessed, no sign would have been left that these passages had ever been inhabited at all; instead, forced to move in haste, they had abandoned everything that was of no immediate worth. Even children had their assigned burdens, and those too old to fight. Everything was split up, coded, designed to slide easily apart — she had caught only glimpses of it as they and the fighters hurried past, but she had understood enough to see that, for all the chaos, this was no hopeless flight. It was a drilled evacuation rehearsed a hundred times before; and if the hunters could only be held back, their quarry might yet achieve the impossible and disappear.

She had pictured them fleeing through the snow, breaking cover at the cave-mouths only to be picked off from the air, and had not seen how they could have any hope to survive. But this was not a human tunnel-complex or mine, where even the deepest delvings must end at last, and the fugitives flee for the surface or turn at bay. There was no rhyme or reason to the caves; no clue, for those who did not know, as to which cracks narrowed at last into inaccessible dark, deep beneath the mountain-roots, and which ran for miles, high above the ice-melt that once had carved their way. For those to whom the Barrier Mountains were home, they were a maze easy to block that no Dome-born soldiers could hope to tread. A road to freedom, and other homes at other times, that was never once revealed to the betraying sky.

“A few more minutes yet —” Semyon, discovered at last in the midst of the evacuation, had barely even registered Blake’s presence save as an additional item that must be assigned. “If we can hold them a few more minutes we’ll get the rest of the sick away — Blake, your group can follow — Motei has charge of the lower galleries, he will show you the way to go —”

Blake frowned. “No.”

That brought the other man’s head up sharply, heavy brows glowering, and Blake held up a hand, forestalling him. “Semyon, we’d only be one more burden to your people down there. Listen to me —” as Semyon’s mouth opened in a snarl — “we came to help. Not to seek refuge. Find us our equipment and we’ll fight. My crew are well-fed — rested — we can take the place of men who know these mountains, men whose skill you desperately need elsewhere —”

“Blake.” Just the one word, almost expressionless. But Cally thought it had cost Avon something to say it.

Blake swung round, sharply. But whatever he read in Avon’s face changed his own. “What is it?”

“We don’t know how many we’re fighting.” Avon selected words swiftly, but with care. “We do know that we’ll be out-gunned and out-numbered. The only possible strategy is to maximise losses at no cost to the defenders — set up traps, deadfalls, barricades along as many false routes as we can. I’ll need Gan’s strength —” his glance swung from Blake to Semyon — “as many others with local knowledge as you can spare, and permission to use any material left behind.”

Semyon held his gaze for a moment, eyes narrowing; then shrugged. “Permission is not mine to give, Kerr Avon — and we have no time to hold Council....”

Then a brief, fierce smile. “Your friend is below, with Motei. Take two more to help you. Do it.”

Avon’s own smile showed for an instant, bleakly, in response. Then he was gone.

Cally’s gaze flew despite herself to Blake, who nodded. She read the answer in his eyes. Trust Avon now... or never trust him again.

“He’ll do everything he promises — and more.” Blake cleared his throat.

“A clever man.”

Semyon had made a question of it, and Blake had smiled in turn. “Oh yes.... in a cause he truly takes to heart. A man I couldn’t afford to lose.”

Cally remembered in the dark, her own mouth twisting wryly. Avon had been as good as his word. She and Blake had been in the forefront of the defence and had taken the brunt of the first assault, firing from shadows into dazzling light as their enemy thrust forward, forced back with the others into what rapidly became a running retreat.

She’d shot blindly again and again, never able to leave cover long enough to take a steady aim, half-deafened and choked by the percussions of their companions’ antique weapons, until the powerpack whined in protest and every recharge was more sluggish than the last. They were being driven back far within the perimeter they’d tried to defend, into open caves where their assailants’ stun-projector radius would be remorselessly effective, and Blake’s face, as smoke-grimed as her own, had been verging on despair. “If Avon —” he’d begun, between clenched teeth.

And then, as if invoked by name like the little blue devil and the clone-sibs, Avon’s traps had erupted around them; ‘discarded’ cables thrumming suddenly to life, and débris cascading barely half a step ahead. The woman at her side, made clumsy by a stun-nimbus to the thigh, had stumbled and almost gone down among a nest of spitting wire. A vast shape in the grit-filled air had loomed out and carried her almost bodily back, dwindling into Gan in the light of a pocket flare.

He’d caught Blake’s eye and grinned, looking remarkably cheerful. “Any minute now...” he’d assured them, forestalling questions as he helped his burden to regain her feet. “Any minute....”

A rolling mass of explosions, carrying far back along the rock, and human voices raised in alarm. Gan’s grin had widened. “That should have blocked them in quite nicely... and if they try to fall back....”

Somewhere behind the dust-cloud, sounds of panic were coming over the crackle of a comm. More shouts from further back, drowning out a hoarse scream.

The others were looking at each other in reawakening hope, smiles cracking open darkened faces, and Blake had clapped Gan hard across the back, his grin almost matching Gan’s own. “Good work, Gan. Where’re the others — where’s Avon?”

The other man gestured towards the distant sounds and Blake nodded in comprehension. “I’ve been the carrot in a trap before,” he’d added cryptically, somewhat to Cally’s confusion, “but never with such a good will....”

He’d broken off and caught Gan by the hand, grasping his other arm in wordless acknowledgement, and Cally had added her own grip, smiling at Gan’s patent delight. Avon should be here, it occurred to her for a moment; but the memory of his cold scorn dampened her own pleasure, and she let her hands fall.

Blake followed suit, glancing round the half-dozen defenders who remained. He raised his voice, bringing a ragged cheer. “We’ve got them trapped now — _your_ territory, _your_ kind of fighting — and we’re in with a chance!”

Trust Blake... but how Avon would have winced. Cally smiled again now at the memory, wondering if the two of them had met up yet. When she’d left, the plan had been to push inward and try to split the attackers’ forces, while Gan led an assault from the side. Avon and his group should have been doing the same from the other direction, and she’d expected to join up with them; but with the power for her weapon almost exhausted, Blake had sent her scouting back instead to the upper levels with which they’d lost contact altogether.

The passages were dark, stripped of their wiring and treacherous with discarded items underfoot. She moved cautiously, each step barely scraping the rock. Even the echoes of the counter-attack below had ebbed into silence now, and her own breathing was heavy in her ears. It was easy to imagine voices up ahead... the flicker of a light....

* * *

Lanuv let the last few grains of gravel trickle through her fingers, disbelieving. She thumbed the detector again and played it over the débris all around. The display never changed, flatly contradicting the evidence of her own eyes. When he heard about this, Travis was going to _murder_ her....

According to the signal, they should have been standing in the middle of a positive embarrassment of the stuff — but she’d had the whole heap excavated out until what was left was practically powder. She’d raked through the best part of it herself, using a hand-sifter, and when big Biladze — she was getting to know the trouble-makers in her little command — had sniggered behind her back at the sight of his lieutenant grovelling in the rubble, she’d set him to do the rest himself. The pitiful remains of that thankless search were piled now in one corner: fragments of casing, a few glistening shards. The rest of it had to have been pulverised beyond recall. Somewhere within the blast that had brought down the roof and blocked the shaft, Servalan’s precious Soteros had finally bitten the dust.

Trouble was, the tracer signal hadn’t. Short of getting the Space Commander back up here to examine the remains with his own two eyes — or, in his case, one eye; Lanuv’s mouth curled upward despite herself — she wasn’t looking forward to her chances of actually convincing him the stuff wasn’t there. Which it wasn’t. Lanuv sighed, and poked at the final handful of sweepings again.

She looked round at the grimy members of her command, currently spitting out dust with more or less refinement as their upbringing took them. Her own mouth was dry and gritty. She wiped the back of her hand across it and spat, to little effect.

“Looks as if we’ve done all we can here,” she admitted grudgingly at last. “You can take a few minutes to clean up —” Biladze’s mouth opened, and she gave him an icy look that shut it again, witticism unspoken — “and then we’ll move on.”

Her eyes ached from the glare of the big taranium beamer they’d rigged to illuminate the work. She slipped round the corner into the shadows to peel back her uniform, feeling the welcome prickle of cool air on her undershirt, and rub at her face. The Space Commander was going to be wondering where she’d got to by now, and no way was he going to be pleased.... She sighed, and rubbed again at her eyes, leaning back against the roughened wall.

When she reopened them, there was a pale face floating in the passageway beyond her. A drained white face, bone-thin, with haunted eyes. Something moved in the darkness.

Lanuv choked, the back of her neck suddenly icy-cold. The dead did not walk in the dark. Did not roam the tunnels under the cities, whispering for justice and revenge....

“ _Lanuv_?” The voice from the tunnel was barely more than a whisper, cracked in very human disbelief. “Lanuv? I thought you were dead....”

“Istan.” She barely recognised her own words, thickened and unsteady. A tight knot seemed to be unwinding in her breast, released from an impaling blade of pain she had not even known was there. “By all the bright jewels — Istan!”

She did not know which of them had made the first move. Istan’s thin shoulders, more shockingly fragile-seeming than ever, were little more than bone and corded muscle under her grip; but the grasp locked tight across her own shoulders had the old indomitable strength, and the other woman’s cheek lay warm and most un-ghost-like against her own.

Lanuv broke away first, blinking back a betraying moisture, and surveyed her friend at arm’s-length, shaking her head in disbelief.

“I thought you were dead.” She echoed Istan’s words without thinking. “They told me you were dead....”

Istan said nothing; but the colour was coming back into her face, and she reached up to cover one of Lanuv’s hands with her own, as if to check that Lanuv was really there. She was warmly dressed, in a dark non-regulation parka and boots, and there was a belted weapon at her side; but the change in her since they had last parted ran deeper than that. She looked tired and drawn, almost transparent, as if she had been ill, and her eyes bore the shadow of remembered pain. But the lost, uncertain look, that had seemed a part of her for so long, had vanished as if it had never been. Where she was now... she belonged.

“They came back for you.” Lanuv felt her own eyes shining, her face splitting into a grin. “Istan, your ship — they came back!”

“Oh yes,” Travis’ voice said grimly from the corner, “they came back.”

* * *

_She was dead, Travis. There were other priorities, and she was dead...._

_Dead or alive, Blake would have come for her, I tell you...._

So much for the Supreme Commander. So much for her pains taken and her assurances. He’d been _right_.

And this time I have you. “Cally....”

There was a fierce pleasure in the single, damning word; in the flicker of the alien eyes — right, left, all around — looking for help that would not come. He’d made sure of that. Get the alien and you’d got Blake. He’d been following her for half a mile.

Lanuv had stepped back, glancing in confusion from her commanding officer to the Auron who’d been posing as her friend, and for a moment Travis hesitated. If he’d ever suspected it would come to this he’d have handled her differently; warned her from the start. He’d wanted to give her a second chance — a clean break from the dead and buried past. He’d been soft on her, that was what it came down to: soft. Allowed her to fool herself....

That way didn’t do a soldier any favours. Now she’d have to face up to it, that was all. Do her duty, like the rest. None of them could afford pity now.

“Take her, Lieutenant. Relief section — to me!”

Cally had backed against the rock, eyes darting more wildly, as the rest of the detachment came running from the shaft beyond. Half of them were still piebald with grime, grinning faces streaked with sweat. But their weapons were clean and ready and only too eager for use. He motioned them round the back, closing in. The ring of captors snapped shut.

“Istan...?” Lanuv was pulling her uniform about her shoulders, with a sudden shiver as if cold, and the Auron’s eyes had widened, still and intent. The dark gaze flickered, from Lanuv to Travis to Lanuv....

“There is no Istan.” Brutal fact. His voice was harsh. “There never was an ‘Istan’ — this woman is an alien telepath, a rebel spy. Her name’s Cally, ke Lanuv, and she works for Blake — Central Security were told she was dead, there’ll be a promotion in this for you....”

Pain. Pain within his skull, beating against him so that he could hardly think. His own voice was agony, crashing through blurred hearing like splintering bone. The alien’s silence mocked him, gambling Lanuv’s loyalty, so certain of her friend, so sure —

“Take her, Lieutenant! That’s an order!” Less of a snarl than a scream, even his voice escaping control. He could feel the men staring... taste the pity. And Lanuv — Lanuv, the youngster he’d plucked from the pit, given back her life, shown everything she knew — Lanuv was defying him, undermining his command....

“No —” She had stepped back as if to shield the Auron with her own body. “Let her _go_ —”

Her voice spiralled, drilling his senses. And Cally stood there saying nothing, nothing, even as Lanuv’s hand dropped to her gun —

His fingers tightened on the blast crystal. Fired again and again, into his lieutenant’s jerking body, the energy discharge stinging like smoke, like tears in the eyes.


	41. In Memoriam

//Blake... Blake... Blake...//

She had not touched the telepathic plane since Amery — since Amery had been lost. Now there was a dull ringing in her mind, the same warning echoing again and again. The warning she had been trying to send out since she first knew that Travis was there.

Cally crouched blindly on the dark ledge above those searching for her, fingers hooked into claws. Instinct hammered at her, deafened to all but hurt. _Huntress... predator... kill, kill, kill...._

No more death, her heart pleaded hopelessly. Please, no more death.

Lanuv’s eyes had been wide and blank above the charred ruin of her breast, glazed over already with incomprehension. The Federation had taken her — murdered her — eaten her — used and discarded her like a broken toy, like _Amery_ —

Mindgrief, from senses healed at last enough to cry out. Cally made no sound, but her heart was wild with weeping.

A lone soldier passed beneath her refuge in Insecution blue and grey, and never knew how close his escape had been. _I will avenge, said the huntress, I will avenge...._ The words of the old tale beat through her veins with every pulse of her blood: will-avenge, will-avenge, will-avenge —

I will not, said grief. No more random killing. No more pointless death.

Another man went by, the blue facing on his coat an unwitting safe-conduct. The killer she wanted was not from Insecution; the killer wore Space Command black....

But Lanuv, too, had borne the badge of Space Command, though Cally had not seen it until too late. Lieutenant, Travis had said, a softening in that harsh face. Take her, Lieutenant. Helpless loyalties — hopeless choice. Who had been the betrayer, and who betrayed?

Lanuv had been Federation, Federation from the first, with Istan as the outlaw — false face, false name. False friend, Cally told herself bitterly, false friend.

She remembered Travis’ face contorted, twisting, as Lanuv fell and his aim swung round — slowly, oh so slowly; automaton-like as time stood still, faces around them blank in dawning shock. And she had leapt, on instinct alone, turned and dodged and leapt among unmoving figures as the instants span away like flying drops, and the darkness took her. The shadows and the safety of the dark.

It was a blind crack that held her now; little more than an alcove, shelving upward so sharply that the briefest of glances would show it was no side-passage but only a cleft in the rock. But there was a high ledge above, where the walls widened. She had marked it instinctively in passing, long habit training her eye; possible ambush, possible cover. An urgent scramble, but one that could be made.

The rock was cold against her forehead and shoulder, biting into muscles tensed to poise her there on the edge of balance. It was no safe refuge. They had only to look up.

Cally watched the passing figures. Beyond them lay her escape. She could not cling here for ever; must leap, sooner or later, uncramp her limbs and leap if she was not to fall.

One more death, she promised herself. One more death, and it is over.

//Blake, Travis is here... Blake...//

* * *

The alien had got away. Lanuv’s treachery — had let her get away —

No. Travis refused even to entertain that thought.

She couldn’t have gone far. She had taken advantage of a moment’s lapse, an instant’s weakness, to slip from within his grasp; but she hadn’t had long enough to make good any kind of escape. He knew for a fact that she hadn’t made it out into the open, still less managed to disable his ship — if that had been her aim — and he was certain she hadn’t doubled back far enough to get down below and lose herself in some maze of tunnels.

She was here somewhere. Biding her time. Waiting her chance. He’d have her, if it meant holding all these useless Insecution incompetents at gun-point and carrying out a proper search himself. He’d paid enough for this. He’d have her, and with her Blake. And then....

He no longer cared. Let Servalan break him, strip his mind, play her games. Blake was the only thing left to him in the world that mattered — now.

“Get that big taranium beamer down here — two of you, rig some proper light. With the number of shadows chasing around the walls every time some fool makes a false move, even a Grenian nidd-tracker would lose the scent....”

Incompetent. Untrained. And now they were cringing every time he gave an order, white-eyed in panic before they’d ever seen action. Ready to run. He’d give his other arm right now for even a half-section of Federation troopers — or mutoids. Give him mutoids. Mutoids, who never let their feelings get in the way of their orders, never let loyalties betray their sworn duty — never had to make that choice —

“Steady with that beamer. You — Biladze — do you want to crack the main casing? Rupture that cell and you’ll catch your spy the hard way — and take the rest of us with you —”

The last word broke off, half-swallowed. Travis almost choked. He’d imagined that voice from behind him. He swung round, searching the darkness. He _had_ to have imagined it....

“Cally?” It came again, barely a whisper, carried by some fluke of the rock. “Cally, I hear you — where are you?”

Somewhere — the nearness of it broke over Travis in a burning rush, so long awaited, so close — somewhere — here — “Biladze, the light!“

The mounting creaked suddenly from behind him as the brightness of it rocked round, the great beam clumsily aimed in a blue-white flood that transfixed him and flooded the passageway. Soldiers framed it on either side, drowned in light; and there, there beyond the rock, pinned as if by a laser probe, was the glimmer of the man’s face he’d been looking for. One arm across the eyes, blinded, glimpsing Travis only in black silhouette.

“Blake,” Travis breathed in anticipation. The name was welling up in him, the taste of victory at last. The moment when they would all know. He flung his head back in a howl of triumph, spot-lit for an instant in the dark. “Bla-aaa-ke!”

He caught Cally’s movement from the corner of his eye in that last fraction of a second, as he was already starting to fire. Too late then to dodge her leap. Too late, when he glimpsed the weapon in her hand, to do anything... but burn....

* * *

It was the name that brought him back, though he barely knew it. Murmured words, echoing strangely along the walls as he lay, swirling and surrounding him.

“...Blake, are you unhurt?...”

“...shot missed.... you to thank for that...”

“...mine missed also, Blake.... not enough power to fire again...”

Someone was breathing, thick bubbling breaths close at hand. Travis knew it for the sound of a dying man. If there were a decent non-com in charge here, someone would put an end to the poor devil’s suffering... there was a soldier bending over the wounded man now, trying to straighten the crumpled figure. The moaning choked, wetly, then gasped into a cough. Every spasm was like fire in his gullet. Travis rushed upwards, back into consciousness, and screamed.

Fire, lapping ruined lungs. She’d missed — missed killing him outright. Near enough to do the job.

A dark, mustachoied face swam above him, plucking at his body with clumsy hands, and Travis tried to thrust it off, curses dying in his throat. They were all around him now, Insecution’s finest, hanging over the Space Commander in slavish concern. Terrified of Federation reprisals. More terrified for their own skins than for the success of their mission —

His left arm still worked, its servos uncaring of the human ruin below. He triggered the fingers to grab his would-be medic by the throat, dragging himself up towards the man’s sweating face. Waves of agony pitched sickeningly around him as the world receded. He fought to ignore it.

Some fool had rolled a stretcher out and was fumbling with the fastenings — had wasted who knew how much time already with his touching concern for the Federation commander. Nothing to do with their own survival chances on arriving back and reporting the Federation officers dead, oh no.... “ _Leave_ it!”

The words shredded his ebbing strength. The man he had by the throat was choking now, caught in the grip of iron fingers locked in their last command. Eyes bulged as the soldier fought for breath. Travis’ own gasps were an effort of will. His blood flecked the other man’s livid face.

“Get Blake... and the... woman. Only two of them... get... Blake...”

“Actually, there are rather more than two of us.” The hint of regret in Blake’s clear tones — magnanimity towards a defeated rival — flayed Travis with pity, searing every remaining strand. “You see, your section down below was destroyed; wiped out. The only surviving threat was from the handful of troops up here — so when Cally’s warning came through, I brought every fighter left to back me up...”

“You’re lying!” Travis choked; hung on to certainty. “Not... enough time...”

“Well, _you_ know if I’m lying, and _I_ know,” Blake retorted, unabashed. “But are your men quite so sure? Are they going to gamble on finding reinforcements down below, or are they just going to run into the same trap that took their barrack-mates? And when the enquiry comes, are they going to plead orders from a man who won’t be around to back them up?”

He could feel the panic in the air, like a fatal infection that flashed from breath to breath, contaminating all around. Murmurs. Protests... wavering.... Shaking hands that prised free his mechanical grip, slapped on the treacherous bite of tranquillisers, painkiller pads against raw flesh —

“Leave me... that’s an order! I order you... leave me... attack —”

He screamed then, helpless, pain bubbling in his throat, as the stretcher lifted with a jerk and his body fell back, tumbled and swaying. His troops were running in pell-mell retreat from one man — one man, standing there taunting them, daring them to take him, break the legend. Cowardice. Mutiny. Rebellion....

He cried out to Lanuv, ordering her to stop them, to press the attack. Remembered. One last betrayal, from the young woman he’d found disgraced and discarded — as he had been. In whom he’d seen and tried to guide the echo of his own, younger self.

The stretcher struck against an outcrop with a jolting crash, and the darkness claimed him at last.

* * *

“You should not have come alone, Blake,” Cally said quietly, still gazing after the vanished soldiers as if she could not credit that they were gone. “What if they had not believed you?”

She was white and drawn and looked unutterably weary, with a pallor that went beyond mere exhaustion. He ought never to have let her come down again to the planet, Blake thought, with a wince for the shuttered pain in her face; should have pleaded illness and forced her to stay behind to take her chances with the _Liberator_. She was running on the edge of her strength — but it was more than that. The hours on Insecution had reawakened those ghosts that had haunted him behind her eyes.

For his part, he’d be more than happy if none of them ever had to see Insecution again. He’d come all too close to losing her — and Avon. Avon. Without whose aid, as he was only too well aware, none of the resistance staged down below, for all its last-minute heroics, would have kept every man, woman and child under these mountains from being killed or captured, to be paraded at the interrogators’ mercy. If Avon had left with the Soteros as he’d planned, by now the rest of them would be dead; or starting to wish they were. It was hard to forgive Avon that. Harder still to forgive him for revealing to Blake so mercilessly his own Cause as a prison, with himself cast as chief gaoler.

Once, he’d thought he could have _liked_ the man. Still did, despite himself, despite all their differences, despite his dependence on Avon’s skill. But if it had been hard to deal with Avon before, it was going to be harder still now, with the raw wound of open hostility between them.

And Cally — Cally had all but withdrawn utterly, to that same pale fierce creature she had been when first he knew her, all her guards up against humanity again. The fire of hope that had burned up in her so brightly was down to a battered ebb.

The knowledge ached. He needed her — not as a foot-soldier in the revolution, not like Avon as a brilliant, unwilling confederate, but as an ally. As a believer. As a friend.

Blake would have given a good deal in that moment to be able to take her — to take them all — away from Insecution and shake off the memories of the place like dust from their feet as if none of it had ever happened. But there were too many others here who had not that luxury, who would have to live and die on this planet, when he had gone, by the consequences of what had passed. He had to see it through to the end.

“What I told Travis was true enough,” he assured her, summoning up a half-smile, “only not quite yet. Avon’s ambush turned the tide; Semyon has them on the run down below, separated from their heavy weapons, half of them scattered and the other half lost. It’s only a matter of time — for all I know the last of the troops have been mopped up already — but we’re so desperately short of men....”

Blake broke off. Cally had taken a few steps away from him, and he could not see her face; but from the line of her back as she gazed downward, he did not think she had heard a word he said. “Cally?”

The body on the ground, black-clad, was all but hidden in the shadows. It had been a woman; brown-haired, young. One hand, almost intact, was still curled about the handle of a half-drawn weapon.

Cally made no move to touch her, or even to come closer. Just stood there, looking, at the tumbled indignity of death.

“Who was she?” Blake said, softly. After a moment, when she did not speak, he reached out to touch her arm. “Who —”

“Nobody.” For a moment, as she whirled, it seemed she would strike him. But the words were dull. “A nobody in the Federation. Nobody who ever mattered at all.”

“Cally —”

Close-cropped curls shadowed her face. The look in her eyes shut him out. //We should go, Blake. Semyon will need help, and there is nothing left here.//

The rocks shuddered, somewhere far above, as the ship that had held the troops lifted off with its handful of fugitives. Blake glanced up, instinctively. Cally, already heading downwards, never even turned.

Nothing left here.

* * *

The heavy clunk of the airlock echoed back along the _Onora_ ’s hull as the pursuit ship disengaged, and the faint hum of the pumps deepened slightly. It was as if the ship, too, had been holding her breath.

Alone on the bridge, Yana shivered suddenly, despite the heat, pulling the crossed scarves of her overtunic more tightly across her breast. She’d dressed up — even the Old Man had — waiting for Avon, waiting for the cargo that was going to move them into the big time. The gauze glimmered through, its flame-red and green vivid against her skin... a piss-poor substitute for the body armour she’d have needed if Jak’s honey tongue had failed, what with Federation boots tramping their deck-plates, and a black-clad mutoid staring down the back of her neck, ice-cool eyes surveying the boards as if taking note of every illegal mod they’d ever had fitted, where and when.

We were going to be rich, Yana told herself bitterly, feeling the chill-sweat still cold on the back of her neck — remember? Can’t say as I recall anything about sitting tight and meek while the Federation locks down our weapons and slaps a fine on every excess cargo-pod....

Not that they’d found the half of it. Jak had ripped out half the jury-rig, powered down the illegals and cut the weapons system back to basics; the _Onora_ had been boarded before, and the Old Man knew how to cripple her just so, and bring her back on line in two shakes of a freighter’s vanes, let alone a pursuit flight.

And they’d had no cargo — thanks to Avon. Not so much as a contraband chrono to hide, let alone a whole stock of liquid gold in the form of highly-confidential medical supplies... which might have been just fine under the circumstances, if they hadn’t also been short by one shuttle, one gunner tech, and one star-ranked pilot. Thanks to dear, double-crossing, Kerr Avon.

She just hoped the Feds had paid him well for this little sting. Because he was going to need every quarter-credit of it to pay off Jak and Nils to save his skin if they ever caught up with him. Jak hadn’t turned a hair at blowing away his bed-mate to save his ship, when it came down to it — and if Ilse had ever fooled herself her ample charms would count for anything when Olsson’s own interests were at stake, that feather-head had deserved everything she’d got — but Yana would lay even odds that every time the Old Man missed his creature comforts from here back to port, the blame would land up on Avon’s account. And Nils — oh, dearest Kerr had pulled the cloth over Nils’ eyes right enough, setting up this so-clever deal, and you didn’t play Nils for a fool. Not if you ever planned to pass Blackport again.

The bridge felt empty where it shouldn’t have; frozen where it should have hummed with life, silent where it should have been lively with malice and mistrust. She could have been on that shuttle. Had been — other times, other places.

Behind her, the door hissed sharply, preparing to open, and hair-trigger nerves had her whirling even as a gust of cold air announced Jak’s return. She couldn’t read his face any more than usual; but his bulk seemed shrunken in on itself, as if drained by its bluster, and a greasy rag was twisted absent-mindedly around one wrist. He elbowed past her to peer at the screens, watching as the three pursuit ships peeled off and away in neat formation, and grunted.

“And what’s that meant to mean?” Yana shot him a scowl. No reply. “Sit tight and shut up, you said. Let the Federation poke all through the ship, you said. Let Jak do the talking —”

“So maybe I just saved your hide, Yana- _fengottir_.” Jak rubbed at his wrist, belly heaving as he cursed, and shoved her out of the way again to reach the pilot’s chair. He stooped, with another grunt, to start splicing on the tangled cable that had once betrayed the link to a strictly proscribed drag-field booster, and felt with one paw along the rim of the console to flick in a course that would aim them out of the system. Back into home territory, Yana registered, squinting at the settings. Back... home.

“Ran a spare panel up to blank the main shuttle bay.” The words were jerked out between tugs as Jak wrenched at the heavy cable cores, and the nav-array lurched as something caught and snapped. Yana grabbed for the cabinet instinctively and got an elbow in the gut for her pains, and a snarl. “Get aft and clear that blank-plate — get your own hands greasy for a change. And check on the spare craft. It fooled the Federation, but I’ll want more than that before I risk my neck in that heap —”

Clear out that empty bay, we’ll want a fresh shuttle in there. Some memorial, Yana thought drily, back in her cabin. She stripped off her best overtunic, dumping it on Ilse’s bunk, and grabbed a soiled worksuit from her locker. Some memorial — trust Jak for that.

Trust Jak? Oh, like swamp-fever she would. A shrug. Like she ever had....


	42. Cloud-cuckoo-bine

“How’s it going?” Vila said cheerfully as the teleport bay materialised.

At least, that was Gan’s best guess. It was the sort of thing Vila _would_ say... and the cheerful tone was hardly in doubt, even if the words hadn’t quite shimmered back into place yet. Granted a total lack of tact and a morbid curiosity, it was just the sort of thing Vila would say.

“Miriam’s down with it. And Semyon.” Which meant the _Liberator_ immunity shots hadn’t worked — or hadn’t taken, as Miriam had said, with the plague running rampant already through everyone on the surface, whether they showed it or not. It had been worth a try all the same, Gan told himself. It had been worth a try.

The crew’s reunion, after the _Liberator_ had finally limped back within hailing distance of the planet’s surface, had been a predictably stormy one. Blake, who had spent hours out in the snow trying to re-establish contact from the rebels’ new location — a set of deep ravines roofed over by glacial ice — had been snappish in direct proportion to his increasing worry. Jenna had started flying out at both Blake and — for no reason that Gan could fathom — Avon, like a frightened scolding mother. Vila had been all in favour of getting everyone on board as soon as possible and taking off for the furthest star-system they could find. Gan himself had been adamant that they had no right to abandon the people here worse-off than if they had never come at all. And Avon had taken care to exclude himself from the entire argument and indulge in a series of sardonic observations as a supposedly unbiased onlooker.

Cally, meanwhile, had been flat-out on a couch in the medical unit. Not Gan’s doing — Blake had slipped her some knock-out drops almost as soon as they returned, and only given Gan the nod to carry her down there when she had started to crumple — but one decision at least that he backed without reservation. She had slept through all the ensuing shouting, through ship’s-night and on until the first light swept across the plains to the Barrier Mountains on Insecution, and had risen at last with some colour in her cheeks, to the news that Miriam had come aboard.

There had been no real question, of course, of the _Liberator_ ’s not going back. The only force on board that was likely to stand any chance when up against Blake’s sense of obligation would have been Avon’s own argument; and Avon, uncharacteristically, had declined to be drawn into any opinion concerning the planet at all. Gan had concluded privately that it was the nearest thing any of them were likely to see to the prickings of conscience where Avon was concerned.

Jenna had taken them in close to the star itself, both to speed recharge of the power banks and to help screen them from Federation scans; but the _Liberator_ ’s energy reserves had still been drained enough to make it unwise to risk another confrontation yet, as even Blake had to agree. There had ben a constant buzz of traffic, both shuttles and signals, going to and from Servalan’s escort fleet deployed above Verno, and enough smaller craft, both Federation and in-system, spread out in patrols to make it all but impossible to slip the _Liberator_ into orbit unnoticed, let alone to stay within teleport range for long. They’d managed it, briefly, to pick up Miriam, and again, at intervals throughout the day, to drop Gan and Blake with medical supplies, to drop Miriam with Vila, to retrieve Gan plus two of the worst victims, to retrieve Blake and Vila plus another crisis case and to drop Gan again, respectively. He’d spent the night down there, trying to help Miriam — who, with hindsight, had been sickening even then.

It was a long time since he had slept anywhere but on the _Liberator_. Strange, to find it strange; to discover that the warm space of his cabin had become as much home to him as that tiny set of rooms they’d shared, he and the woman he’d loved, down on Earth — and counted themselves lucky at that.

He thought of her, as he could do now from time to time, without pain. With only the memory of warmth, and her love. It had been a tiny, cramped space, he knew that now, but it had been theirs alone; a haven of peace after the long rows of beds in the unmarried quarters, with even the cupboards made gay with plastic and with paint, her nimble fingers guiding his own, and the constant ripple of that music she’d liked from the viewscreen on the wall.

They had been lucky, after all, the two of them. To have had a home, despite everything. To have been happy, in two-and-a-half rooms, and to have that to look back on.

There would be nothing left, now. The rooms would would have been reallocated long since, stripped of all trace of her and shaped around some other couple’s life. He’d believed he could never belong anywhere again. Had gone wherever they sent him, from cell to cell, one barren room to another, without complaint, arriving without expectations and leaving without regrets. It had been strange, down on the planet at nightfall, to find himself missing the familiar surroundings of his cabin with that same half-forgotten pang.

There was little enough that was really his there, even now; only memories, and a scatter of cheap ornaments he’d picked up from planets here and there to provide a bit of cheerful colour. He’d lost everything the two of them had once owned, long before the transfer to the _London_ and the convicts’ vanishingly-small weight allowance. Experimental subjects didn’t have possessions, in the Federation. He’d been shipped out straight to the medical facility in the same state as when Blake had picked him up from Cygnus Alpha, later: with nothing but the prison clothes he stood up in.

He’d had only memories with which to people his cabin on the _Liberator_. Memories, and the few things he’d bought because she would have liked them. There was enough money in the treasure room to pay for Alpha elegancies a hundred times over for each of them without a trace, when the _Liberator_ ’s crew had leisure to buy; but he was more comfortable with the uncomplicated style he’d grown up with, in the Gamma grades. Cheap tat, Avon had called it, with a patrician sneer. But then Avon, Gan was all but certain — Avon, for all his hauteur and his superior taste, had never known a real home to come back to. Never looked up from his meal to see his woman come through the door, tired, dusty and smiling from a long day’s work.

Nor had most of those now lying sick on Insecution, by what he could tell. A few — the remnants of the older cadre, the ‘politicals’ as Avdoty had called them — had left comfortable jobs, steady lives of the kind he had known, to come here out of conviction. The rest were a selection of out-liers, thrust to the margins within the Dome, who blamed the Federation for everything that was wrong with their own world; of dissidents, bony and ardent, who hardly knew what they wanted but knew in vast detail what they didn’t want; and of those who had made life too hot to hold them within the cities and faced a simple choice between hardship in the mountains, or jail.

Gan had learned more about Insecution now than anything Blake had been able to tell them. It was corrupt — more corrupt to the core, behind the show of democracy, than even the arbitrary Federation life they’d known. The Federation had at least begun with a pretence at equality. Life on Insecution was driven by party blocs, by back-hand negotiation, and by greed. Keeping the Federation out was barely even going to begin to solve their problems. Those who backed the wrong boss, or couldn’t keep up their payments, went under. And some of them — the lucky ones — ended up out here. Until, with the silent deadly hand of the plague, that luck had run out.

He knew why Blake had done... what he had. Told himself also that, Avon aside, the Soteros had been a deadly bait that had all but betrayed them all into the hands of the Federation. But for those who were dying for lack of care — dying of _lerva_ -plague because there were not enough hands left to pull exhausted bodies through the crisis — the Soteros had been their last hope. Blake was doing everything he could now to help, throwing the _Liberator_ ’s crew and the barely-tapped resources of her medical bay into action, evacuating those most gravely ill on board ship as and when they could approach. Gan crouched to help Vila unclip bracelets from the two motionless bodies at his feet in the teleport bay and lift them onto the makeshift gurney he had rigged from an antigrav stretcher. It wasn’t going to be enough.

They could save a few. But anyone still left down there could do the arithmetic. It wasn’t the miracle cure they’d been promised, and that was worse: the miracle they’d been promised and that had been dashed from their lips, as they saw it, by Blake’s _Liberator_ and a matter of petty shipboard politics. With Miriam down, feelings were running high. Another few days — if it lasted that long — and when he set foot on the planet Blake might find himself being lynched by a mob of staggering desperates.

And Blake had known what he was doing, Gan told himself painfully, smoothing aside the sweat-streaked stubble that had once been heavy braids framing the face of the woman under his hands, trying to soothe her as she moaned. Blake had known what he was doing, when he took care to leave Gan himself in the clear while he gambled the lives of those sick on Insecution against stopping Avon — and lost.

Little enough comfort, to say that if Avon had _not_ been stopped, those dying now would be not one whit better off. The _Liberator_ had come to help these people. She had presided over nothing but disaster.

“Watch it!”

Vila had stumbled, lurching against the gurney, and it took all Gan’s strength to prevent the unbalanced antigravs from overturning it. Exhaustion had taken the edge off even Gan’s patience — he’d barely snatched a few hours’ sleep during the belated planetary night — and he ignored the hurt look Vila gave him. He waved the smaller man back as they reached the difficult turn into the medical bay, edging the bulky load round the corner single-handed.

The two couches he could glimpse through the doorway were empty. A sharp pang of concern. “How about those three we brought up yesterday?”

The third couch they’d rigged up was over the far side of the section and he could only glimpse its foot — but the little girl who’d been strapped into its systems yesterday had been so tiny she had barely reached halfway down. The other two had been adult, their wasted bodies full-grown. He’d seen them stablised before he left. They couldn’t have died overnight — please, no, not with the full might of the _Liberator_ ’s medical technology struggling on their behalf....

“Oh, Cally said they could get up.” Vila squinted up at him, looking slightly surprised. “I’ve been talking to the older one, Mykola. You should hear some of the stories she’s got to tell about the night-life down at Verno — enough to freeze your —”

“Said they could _get up_?”

“Well, they were still a bit wobbly on their pins, but Cally said that was because they’d been in bed for so long, and getting up was the best thing for them now.” Vila grinned at Gan’s surprise. “See, I thought you’d be pleased. That little girl of yours is a real terror — did you know? Every time she falls over she says it’s because I pushed her....”

Gan, thrusting the gurney in front of him towards the nearest couch, barely even heard him. When he’d first laid eyes on Mykola, down in the green-blue dusk under the ice, she’d already been dying, the marks of it on her face as clear as those on Soltys who’d died under his hands. The two had been close since girlhood, Miriam had told him shortly; they’d been among the first to oppose the Federation, among the first team to go down with the plague, and with the loss of her oldest friend she doubted Mykola had much will left to live. She’d been so finely balanced between life and death he’d been afraid the teleport shock itself might be more than she could bear.

And now she was swapping racy stories with Vila. Even the cream of Federation technology would have been hard put to it to save her, let alone effect an overnight cure. He’d known the _Liberator_ ’s systems were light-years ahead of anything he himself had ever seen; he hadn’t known they could work miracles....

“Easy — easy now.” The weaker of his two new patients, a thick-set man in his forties, struggled feebly against Gan’s hands as he tried to lift him across onto the vacant couch, and he pitched his voice softly, hoping to break through the feverish haze. “Easy now — just a moment more —”

“I’ll take his legs, Gan.”

He looked up, found Blake there, and nodded, shifting his grip. “Got him? Ready — one, two — lift!” Between them they made light work of it, swinging the heavy body across as gently as could be managed.

“Here — let me do that.” Blake caught hold of the auxiliary nutrient line as it slipped through Gan’s fingers, made clumsy by fatigue. Gan caught a flash of concern in his eyes as the other man stooped to set the micro-feeder in place; but when he looked up Blake had caught back whatever impulsive words had risen to his lips.

“I can manage,” Blake added after a moment. “Can you handle the other one — Vena, isn’t it?”

Gan nodded, astonished as ever by Blake’s ability to retain names barely even mentioned in passing. They’d seen dozens of plague cases together last night. Blake had no reason to recall this one in particular, and yet he had remembered her. It was a knack that warmed people to him despite themselves.

“Yes, Vena. It’s all right. She’s not heavy.”

Though she should have been, Gan thought painfully, easing her across onto the medical couch as gently as he could. A big, raw-boned woman, as tall as Avon if not Blake, Vena should have been a dead weight to lift. These people weren’t only weakened by illness. They hadn’t been getting proper food for a long time.

“Blake, we have to do something —”

“We _are_ doing something.” Blake, glancing across from his own patient, fumbled a connection and added something vehement under his breath. “And you’re doing more than you can afford already — have you looked in a mirror recently? These people need a hospital ship — the _Liberator_ isn’t a substitute —”

“We’re the only substitute they’re going to get,” Gan said simply. Doing more than he could afford? He almost smiled. That was rich, coming from Blake, who’d been at it for so long none of them even bothered to point it out.

“Blake, we can do better than a hospital ship. We can cure them. Mykola, yesterday, was one of the worst cases I’ve seen — today Vila says she’s on her feet and chatting nineteen to the dozen....” He tried to catch Vila’s eye for corroboration, only to discover that he’d performed his usual miraculous disappearing trick and made himself scarce in the face of anything that could be described as work.

But Blake was shaking his head. “I know. I’ve seen her. But it’s not going to be enough. There are more than a hundred people down there. There isn’t enough space, or time —”

“We can’t just leave them.” Gan made it a flat statement, and Blake sighed.

“We’re not going to. But treating them up here in ones and twos, at the risk of losing the whole ship and everyone aboard every time we try — Jenna says even she’s running out of tricks she can pull to sneak us back into the system again and again — it isn’t a good enough answer, let alone fast enough. There has to be another way.”

He leaned over to align the big magnoducic analyser with his patient’s chest cavity, and Gan waited for him to continue. It wasn’t until Blake straightened up and began snapping the restraints into place over the couch in silence that it dawned on him that Blake wasn’t just giving himself time to think.

Gan frowned, sliding home his own restraints over Vena’s restless form. “What? What other way?”

Blake’s hands fell, in something that looked close to defeat. “I don’t know. But we’ve got the research equipment of half a galaxy in here, if we only knew how to use it. There has to be something.”

“Orac...?”

“Cally’s got him.” Blake nodded towards the back of the medical bay. “She was working with the young scientist who was deeply involved in the whole Soteros scheme —”

“—I know —”

“—she feels she has more chance than any of the rest of us.“

Gan had glanced round, instinctively, in the direction Blake had indicated. But the furthest part of the medical bay was out of sight. “What’s she doing?”

“Talking to ghosts... according to Vila.”

Startled, Gan looked back at him more closely. But there was even less trace of a jest in the unhappy twist of Blake’s mouth than there had been in his voice. Conscious of Gan’s gaze, the other man rubbed at his brows as if to erase the little frown that kept gathering there.

“Miriam brought samples yesterday, and notes they’d made from before.... Cally volunteered, Gan. I wouldn’t have asked it of her. But it was her choice.”

* * *

Cally’s fine-drawn features shifted as if in mimicry as she leant forward, frowning over the rows of stoppered tubes in front of her. Vila, sitting curled up on a tall stool that let him peer over her shoulder from a safe distance, saw the shadow of a stranger’s expressions flow over her face like a viscast image, and shivered.

“I wish she wouldn’t do that,” he said under his breath to Gan, who’d come in behind them a few minutes ago and was leaning against the wall in silence. “It gives me the creeps. It’s different for you — you never knew him....”

But he, Vila, had tangled with this Amery when he was still alive. He could still remember those pale eyes that had looked at him as if he was a piece of dirt. Whatever he’d been to Cally — and frankly, from what he’d heard so far Vila couldn’t see that any of them were ever likely to work that one out — the other Auron had been hostile to Vila, and watching the ghost of that scowl echoed in Cally’s own movements was enough to send a shiver down the back of his neck. It was as if something were moving her face for her from the inside like the controls of a puppet.

There was a horrid fascination to it, all the same. Vila tried to find himself things to do in other places on the _Liberator_ ; but somehow, he kept coming back.

Cally had set up one corner of the medical bay as a laboratory, withdrawing increasingly often into that frightening alien memory as she selected and set up equipment from the stores none of them had ever known how to use. She’d demanded a Matrison sequencer at one point, and disappeared into a volley of technical talk with Zen that Vila hadn’t understood at all before the computer had been able to tell her what the nearest equivalent on board the _Liberator_ was. Not that Vila wasn’t used to technical gibberish being spouted over his head. It was the blank panic of the way she’d looked at her sequencer when she’d got it that stuck in his mind; as if she hadn’t understood any of that talk either.

But she’d switched back into zombie-mode and plumbed all the equipment in as if she’d been handling it all her life, and taken refuge in her little white cubby-hole as if nothing else mattered in the world. There was a big screen over to the left that showed wriggly things that made Vila think of a nasty dose of Delta belly-gripe; there were tall cabinets that hummed a little, with tiny slots in the front that accepted a single glass tube at a time and reminded him of nothing so much as big Gan eating mealybeans for the first time, very suspiciously, one by one; and there were a dozen or so remote probes like the ones used for working on microlocks, and which he would long since have appropriated for himself if he’d known they were there. In one illuminated rack there was a whole collection of tubes and vials, agents and reagents, all colour-coded for safety, that glowed like an exotic jeweller’s display and made his fingers itch reflexively just looking at them.

And Cally’s own slim fingers were moving through the whole assemblage with a sort of halting dexterity, as if trying to work with arms that weren’t quite as long as she’d expected. It was like watching hypno-trained techs in their first hours on the job — they’d never got hypno-training to stick on Vila, any more than any of the other conditioning the head-adjusters had tried, but most of the penal colonies used it to process their intake into instant useful labour, and he’d caught sight of the symptoms often enough — and, like he’d said, it gave him the creeps.

Gan’s hands were twisted together in an unconscious betrayal of strain. He’d spotted the essential wrongness in the way Cally was moving, Vila thought. He just hadn’t worked out why.

“What’s going on?” It was a whisper, although Vila wasn’t sure Cally would even have twitched if Gan had shouted. “Vila, what’s happening to her?”

“You’re not looking at Cally,” Vila told him. “You’re looking at a ghost.”

“That’s not funny.” If he’d expected to get a rise out of Gan, he was disappointed as usual. The big man just stood there looking at him with a faint line of distress between his brows, waiting for an answer, and Vila sighed.

“Look, it’s the truth. You heard the same story from Cally that I did; you were there. She did some kind of mind-twinning trick with this other Auron who invented the Soteros, and they didn’t get separated properly before he died. So bits of his mind are still in there —” he nodded at Cally’s averted curls —“like a ghost.”

Gan took a step forward, fists clenching. “You mean this dead Auron is taking her over —”

“No, no,” Vila said hastily. He didn’t fancy his chances of stopping Gan if the other man took it into his head that Cally needed ‘rescuing’.

“It’s the other way round. She’s using some of his memories. Only they’ve nearly worn off, she says, so she has to go right down and practically pretend to _be_ him before she can get at any of that stuff. And he knew how to work all this lot, you see, and she doesn’t.” He gestured around the assorted equipment Cally has scrounged from all over the ship. “If you talk to her now, it’s like talking to a stranger, even once she’s come up far enough to remember who you are...”

Vila shivered. He’d asked her, right at the start, if it was dangerous.

“Very dangerous,” Cally had said quietly. “Among my people it is forbidden. A dead mind cannot live, but the living mind can die.”

Zombie was the word all right, Vila thought, shivering again. Zombie was what you’d get, if Cally couldn’t keep control over what she was trying to do. An empty body staggering around, too mindless to know that it was already dead and just happened to be still moving.

But Gan was nodding as if something in what Vila had just said had struck a chord.

“Like a memory-rhyme. Yes, I see. You can’t jump straight to the knowledge you’re trying to remember — you have to trot out the whole thing from the start, because it’s all tied up with the pattern that got you to remember it in the first place. You can’t remember things you didn’t know without remembering the person who did know them...” He broke off, his tone sharpening. “Cally? Cally, what is it?”

He pushed past Vila, almost knocking him off his stool, and Vila jumped down hastily, trying to wriggle under Gan’s arm to catch a glimpse of whatever it was the other man had seen. He hadn’t been looking at Cally, he’d been looking round at Gan, and now Gan was in front of him and he couldn’t see anything at all. “Gan, shove _over_ —”

“He was wrong.” Cally’s voice was very low, almost muffled, but it was her own. She had dropped her head into her hands abruptly, shoulders slumping; now she looked up at the two of them, almost in surprise. “He _believed_ — I saw the truth of it in him — and they lied to him. Of course they lied. I knew the Federation for what it was... I could have warned him....”

Vila elbowed Gan shamelessly in a sensitive place, and finally succeeded in getting past. He grabbed one of Cally’s hands. She’d been at it all day. There were marks round her eyes from leaning too hard on the viewer, and she looked nearly as all-in as Gan did.

He tugged on her hand, and finally got her to look at him. “Cally, what have you found?”

Cally pulled her hand free and seemed to withdraw into herself, smoothing the long folds of her tunic over and over across her lap. “I was looking at the plague itself, Vila. The Federation did not only bring it here — they created it. I found the signature of the Central Science Complex on every strand.”

“ _Signature_?” Vila shot an incredulous glance at Gan, tapping his head significantly. “On a _germ_?”

//If you cannot be bothered to understand, Vila, at least take the trouble to stay quiet.// Cally’s tight-lipped expression warned him, too late, that the gesture he’d used was rather more cross-cultural than he’d counted on, and for a moment he thought he saw Amery’s ghost again in her cold eyes. Had to be, didn’t it? After all, good old Cally could take a joke — couldn’t she?

But when she spoke again it was, pointedly, to Gan.

“Miriam brought up some blood samples. She thought we might be able to find some trace of the anti-virus in them, isolate and reproduce it. But when we checked, there was no trace of the Soteros strain left. The fluid vector in which it was held carried an organic compound in solution that triggered a self-terminating trait. Once in the body, it would cease to reproduce after a set number of generations. It was the same type of back-door that was engineered into every treatment that was ever worked on in the Central Science Complex.”

“But why?” Vila said, honestly puzzled. “I mean, why, if it’s just going to mean the stuff stops working and they have to do it all over again? I thought this Amery of yours was all hot against crooked deals and cashing in on the sick —”

It wasn’t the ice in Cally’s eyes that made him flinch this time. It was the unaccustomed glimpse of the betrayed hurt behind them. She didn’t have to look at him like that, as if he was Travis or somebody torturing her and then gloating about it....

“It’s a safety measure for the Federation — like a limiter.” Gan’s voice made them both jump. “Isn’t it, Cally? If something like the Soteros went wrong and then got loose in the lab, it could wipe out the best brains in the C.S.C. just like that. They had to make sure there was a way to stop it spreading, if it ever infected the staff themselves.”

“Yes.” Cally’s voice was barely audible. “Everyone in the C.S.C. knew. It was standard practice. And they all knew why — because they worked on viral vectors, engineered organisms designed to invade cells and replace the damage within, as accurate as a surgical laser and as potentially lethal if a slip was made....”

“Wait a minute,” Gan said sharply, with a look at her face. “Are you saying a slip _was_ made — and Amery found out about it? That the Soteros —”

He broke off as she shook her head. “The Soteros was everything Amery promised. Everything the project ever claimed to be — everything he told me about the work of the Central Science Complex. It was a genuine breakthrough, a potential forerunner of many more. It was the Federation doing research for the sake of healing, not to harm, pure science without the taint of politics. It was the proof of what he so ardently believed: that the great institutions of the Federation stood apart from any petty excesses, that they held the future of the galaxy....”

Vila blinked. “If you ask me, he must have been completely— Ow! Gan....”

A large hand had descended on his shoulder. “But she didn’t ask you,” Gan reminded him. His tone was gentle. The grip of his fingers was not.

“Cally, what happened? What did you find out?”

“The _lerva_ -plague, here in the mountains. I was studying the samples.” Cally stood up, abruptly, as if the air was choking her, and caught hold of the big screen on the corner of the worktop, dragging it round. “Look. This is the plague structure Amery knew. Orac found this in the Archive Institute library.”

She was pointing to a set of squiggles that highlighted themselves as her fingers brushed the surface, in what Vila could just recognise as some kind of biological diagram. He didn’t imagine even Avon would have been able to understand it.

But Cally was indicating another set as if they were self-evident. “This is the structure that is down there now. Changed, here — and here — and here.” A moment’s pause, almost too brief for significance. “And here.”

And this time, as two tiny sections of the display lit up, one, within the diagram, glowing crimson and another at the top of the screen in blue, Vila could see what she was pointing at. The same pattern, identical in every way.

“What is it?” Gan was frowning, almost as if he’d already guessed.

“It’s the answer for those dying. Servalan’s mistake.” But Cally’s eyes were desolate. “And it would have broken Amery’s heart.”

A long “Ohhh....” from Gan, on a fading breath, like some revelation. Frustrated by all the waffle, Vila could cheerfully have strangled him.

He dug an elbow into Gan again. “What _is_ it?”

“It’s the self-terminating complex,” Gan said quietly. “It’s the signature of the C.S.C.”

* * *

“You mean it’s that simple? You can just switch it off?” Vila sounded quite indignant, and Cally spared him an answer at last. He hadn’t meant to hurt her as much as he had, she knew that. It was a way of survival, to play the clown at the expense of things he did not understand.

“Yes. You can just switch it off.”

They had lied to Amery, for all his high faith and his ideals. They had taken his skills, the hard-won knowledge of Auron, and assured him of the integrity of their work. And he had defended them in all the passion of his belief. Defended creatures like Andorf, who had sold him to his death. Defended a Science Complex that could not, _could_ not have been implicated in the creation of poisons for Space Command like those that had devastated Saurian Major or been seeded aboard the _Liberator_ from icy Fimbuldyr, that did not alter plague-germs for Servalan... only they had.

She would never even have doubted it, once. Naïve... weak... corrupt... she would have made the same assumptions as Avon about the Federation’s tame scientists. And then she had met Amery — and Lanuv. That wound was too raw, as yet, for her to touch. Amery had at least died in seeking his own revenge, payment for the betrayal of what had been done to him. Lanuv had only been trying to shield Cally.

She had known better than to trust the Federation, once. If she had gone as far in rescuing Amery from his life as he had in ‘rescuing’ her — if she had brought him back with her against his will aboard the _Liberator_ , showed him the reality of her world as he had demonstrated his — they would not have died, Amery and Lanuv. If she had not been swayed by the strength of his belief, they need not have died.

She had been living in his memories for so many hours that she could almost taste his pride in his workplace. The knowledge of how the plague could be stopped was inescapably entwined with the hurt it would have caused him.

“Yes, you can switch it off. Anyone who worked there would know. While they were tailoring the _lerva_ -plague to the Supreme Commander’s requirements, they put in a back-door for their own safety. Only no-one told Servalan....”

“How?” The new voice made them all turn round. The woman Mykola, a bright scarf tied over her shaven hair, was supporting herself against the partition that divided the nook off from the medical bay, with Blake half a pace behind. He looked as if he were about to offer her support, but she shook him off, taking a few steps further forward and ignoring Gan when he tried to set the stool for her. Her eyes were fixed on Cally.

“How can this be done, Cally of Auron? How can this ‘back-door’ be opened?” She glanced back for a moment towards the main part of the medical bay, where the two sufferers lay as silent and deathlike as she herself had done the day before, encased in the highest technology the _Liberator_ had to offer. “How can it be done so easily?”

“A complex organic chain keyed to that strain of the virus,” Cally told her, and Blake beyond her. She looked back at the screen, where the molecules danced. The diagram had already begun to blur back into the abstract. Amery could have read it off as clear as print; but she had only fading mind-scars to guide her.

She sank back into memories, deaf to Vila’s faint unhappy murmur. Laughter, through a dream. Human voices, young and jaunty, raised in a shout of mirth. ‘Cloud-cuckoo-bine,’ a fair youth — Toneld? — flung back from the neighbouring table, and pointed. The laughter followed his finger, turned now against the Auron, human humour grown suddenly hostile, shutting him out —

Cally broke out of it with a gasp. Knowledge could not be recalled in abstract, and it came at a price. She had learned more of Amery’s life now than he had ever told her of his own free will, and the taste of it was bitter. Small wonder the boy had flung himself head over heels at the first person with whom he could truly share laughter — the first to show him kindness....

“Clo-cucubinol dihytrine,” she said steadily, though her heart was aching. “I have not the skill to synthesise it by hand; but Zen can do so easily, if the right program can be set up.”

“Avon can do that,” Blake said, brushing past the woman from Insecution and setting a firm arm about Cally’s shoulders. “It’s the least he can do. You can take a rest. You’re barely out of bed yourself.”

His arm was urging her relentlessly backwards, down into her seat, and Cally sat obediently. She was aware, suddenly, of a great exhaustion of tension leaving her, like a ghost that had been riding her shoulders. Taking one more look across at the glowing display that had been conjured, almost without her knowledge, by her own fingers, she reached out and shut off the screen. The intricate designs faded back into the meaningless dark.

Mykola’s tilted eyes were watching her curiously. The woman was still gaunt from her illness, but very much awake. Cally judged her to be about Miriam’s age, calm and competent. Those like her would be needed down below, now more than ever. If she were willing.... And that thought led to another, more urgent. She struggled to get up.

“Gan, what they need above all is hope. Someone must —”

Blake had transferred both hands to her shoulders, pressing her quite firmly down again. “I’ll go — if I can persuade Jenna into running our necks into the noose one more time. You and the others too, Mykola, if you’re ready —” he received a nod — “Vila will show you to the teleport bay. Not you, Gan! You two stay here. You’ve done more than enough.”

“But —” Gan was looking seriously concerned, but after a moment Blake laughed.

“Yes. I do know. But it’s all right; they won’t lynch me now.” He caught Cally’s puzzled look and grinned. “I’m bringing them another miracle.”


	43. Loyal and Loving and True

With the solution once reduced to a mere logistical problem, the rest was simple. The _Liberator_ ’s systems were more than capable of synthesising the necessary molecule chains, and the response in the plague victims was immediate. There were two more deaths during the first day, as the sheer numbers of casualties overwhelmed everything that could be done, but that was the end of it. By the time a fresh dawn touched the mountains and the _Liberator_ slipped into orbit for one final time, the worst was already over.

So was Insecution’s independence from the Federation. The formal accord had been signed the previous night.

Blake had offered a berth on-board the _Liberator_ or transport to another planet for any who wished to leave; but there had been no takers. Few were in any condition to make decisions, and few of those to whom he spoke believed that direct Federation rule would make any difference.

“Things have always been bad.” Semyon dismissed it with a shrug. “Speak to any on the Council, they will tell you — the Federation can do no more than our own rulers do, save to ship us further away. Most here have no stomach for your fight, Roj Blake. They run this far but no further. And if they starve, at least they starve at home.”

Avon put it more succinctly. “They’re finished, Blake. They know it and you know it — and if they choose to skulk back to their cities and get picked up by the government, then that’s their affair. Now, I suggest we get out of here, before the Federation picks up _us_.”

And looking from face to face, Blake had seen nothing but agreement among his crew. Even Gan had given a reluctant nod.

“Well, there it goes,” Vila said now cheerfully, watching the planet recede on the main screen. “Insecution. Land of ice and snow, where your frostbitten fingers drop off as souvenirs, and your local friendly resistance movement are only too ready with a handshake, a generous clasp, and a warm infectious cough —”

“Shut up, Vila.” Jenna checked the position of the inner planets on the scanner, and adjusted their course. “That’s one place I’ve had enough of already to last a lifetime.”

“Indeed.” If Avon’s tone was a little more heartfelt than usual, Blake could not detect it. He was watching Blake with all his usual cynical challenge, but behind the hard veneer Blake sensed a very real hostility that brought his own hackles up in response. It was as if the months of teamwork and shared danger that had bound them all into a close-knit unit had never been — as if they were back on the _London_ after the failed escape, imprisoned in mutual recrimination and contempt. It would be a long time before things were back on a warm footing between them — if they ever were.

“He’s going to take the _Liberator_. For once in your life will you listen?” Jenna, waylaying him last night as they left the flight deck, had almost dragged him to a standstill, hanging onto his arm. “Do you realise what you’ve done? You’re driving him to it. You won’t let him leave the crew, you made that plain. The only way out you’ve left him is to take the ship, take the crew — and leave _you_ instead. As long as he could dream he was going to walk out whenever he felt like it, there was a safety-vent left. Now the two of you have been locked into some kind of head-on contest — and if he can’t go round you, in the end, he’ll go through you. In the long run you can’t just leave Avon alone and trust to his better nature, Blake — if this Insecution business has taught you anything at all it should have shown you that. If you put a weapon to your own head and push him far enough and hard enough, eventually he _will_ pull the trigger.”

Blake had shaken his head, detaching her grip gently. “He won’t. He belongs here, he’s part of the crew, and in his heart he still knows that.” A wry half-laugh. “Haven’t you asked yourself whether he doesn’t protest too much? Oh, he doesn’t like it, he won’t admit it, I imagine, even to himself, but it’s true. Those are the chains he’s trying to pull against, Jenna; whatever he thinks, it’s nothing to do with me.”

“If you say so.” For her part, Jenna was clearly less than convinced. “But if I were you I’d be more worried about what _he_ thinks is the truth, not what you think it is....”

The _Liberator_ crept forward in a shallow curve towards the sun. Blake looked across now at Jenna and found her very busy of a sudden with her screens and switches, laying in a course that would give them a gravity-shot around Arnya and clear out of the system, faster than anything that might follow. It was a task that was — very pointedly — taking all her attention.

Cally and Gan had been standing-by at their monitoring posts, feeding her information; but even as he looked Cally said something in a low voice to Jenna, got a brief nod in return, slipped down from her place and left the flight deck quietly. Blake watched her go, trying not to frown.

“Jenna, what is it? Is she all right?”

Jenna put her hands on her hips and favoured him with a look. Blake became belatedly aware that his words had attracted every eye on the flight deck. “She just wants a little privacy — if that’s not too much to ask round here.”

“Perhaps Blake is worried that his most loyal follower may take it into her head to disappear again... and abandon him to the company of those who actually like to look before we leap.” Avon left his own place, walked down, and seated himself at the front of the flight deck, crossing one booted leg over the other with some deliberation before looking up. “So what is it to be next, Blake? What mission of mercy has caught your eye? How many more of us will be expected to minister to the great unwashed?”

“I thought we were going back to Blackport,” Vila protested. “I’ve been counting on it. It’s the only thing that’s kept me going....”

“And here I thought it was the contents of the drinks cabinet,” Avon murmured, and even Gan had to suppress a smile.

“I’m afraid we can’t go back to Blackport,” Blake said, and Vila moaned.

“I knew it. Three whole days, he told us. I knew it was too good to last....”

“Any particular reason?” Gan said mildly. It was the cue Blake had been waiting for.

“There’s a certain Captain Nils who’s got his knife out by now for Avon in a big way,” he told them all, watching Vila’s accusing glare shift to Avon, who glared back. “We’re going to have to stay clear of Blackport on Avon’s account for some time. Nils has got a lot of influence in that sector, and the _Liberator_ ’s too distinctive.”

“I’m sure we’re all very grateful to Avon,” Jenna said, her tone almost as sweet as Servalan’s own. But her gaze was fixed on Blake. “And had it occurred to you that after the last few days, we’re all in more need of relaxation than ever — including you? There aren’t too many high-class places as liberal as Blackport between here and the Inner Sectors.”

“We’ll find somewhere,” Blake assured her, making a mental note to look into possibilities at some point. Later. If things went well with the contact Orac had found for him, perhaps. They’d have something to celebrate then.

Meanwhile, a few days back in the regular routine of deep space with nothing to worry about would do wonders to rest his crew. It always did. There was no need to waste time hunting for luxury pleasure centres they had all managed without perfectly well back on Earth....

“So where _are_ we headed for?” Avon was hard to deflect. “I suppose it would be too much to hope that Blake has taken to heart the futility of rushing in to the aid of every lame-duck liberation movement we encounter?”

Blake took a breath and squared his shoulders, smiling slightly. He surveyed the flight-deck, waiting a moment to catch their attention, and leaned forward.

“Actually, I’ve taken a number of things to heart over the days since we made Blackport. The first is the power of money.” He met Avon’s stare directly, searching for some hint of embarrassment or shame. But the other man’s eyes didn’t even flicker, and Blake’s own smile faded. “We’ve got potentially vast financial resources on board this very ship. It’s time we tried to use them.”

Jenna traded a glance of her own with Avon, and raised an eyebrow. “Now, that’s the most sensible thing I’ve heard you say in the last year and a half. Whom are you planning to buy off? And where?”

“Another thing I learned, as Avon points out,” Blake continued, sidestepping her question for the moment, “is that you don’t get far by attacking the ruling powers from the outside. You need a route to the inside, a lever at the centre itself; and for us, with the Terran Federation, that means Earth.”

“We’re going to buy our way back to _Earth_?” It was almost a yelp, and Vila looked as if he didn’t know whether to be awed by the scale of Blake’s ambitions or scared out of his wits.

“Blake, are you serious?” Gan broke in, and Blake raised both hands, trying to calm the situation.

“No, no, we’re not going to Earth. Not yet, anyway.”

Memory, of the Earth as he had last seen it, misty green-blue through the viewport on the _London_. He had the freedom of a thousand worlds now on board the _Liberator_ , undreamed-of in that hour when he had promised himself that he would return. But the passion of that vow had not lost its force, any more than had the iron grip of the Federation on the world that was his home. That grip would be broken; the truth known, the Domes breached. Mankind would once more inherit the Earth, and the tyranny of Terra upon the galaxy would be gone.

The fate that had led him to the _Liberator_ was far, far better than exile on Cygnus Alpha. But he was not Jenna, who asked nothing better of life than a great ship, and a star to steer her by. Some day he would be coming back, back to Earth to finish the work that he had begun. Back home to stay.

“We’re not going to Earth just yet — we’re going to the Third Sector, to make a contact that can get us everything we need. We’re going to buy the use of a network that can organise into the very heart of the Federated worlds. We’re going to pay off the Terra Nostra.”

Pandemonium.

Flat protest from Gan. Avon and Jenna both shouting at once. Vila’s voice soaring in conviction of disaster. Blake hadn’t expected instant enthusiasm. He had expected to be able to hear himself think.

“Listen!” He had to shout twice as Jenna tried to interrupt.

“Listen,” he said again, into the relative silence that followed. “We can discuss this again once we get there, once we’ve all had a chance to think it over for a few days. We’re not committed to anything yet. But the Third Sector is as good a place as any to lose the Federation, and Space City is neutral territory....”

“Space City?” Vila’s face cleared like magic. “ _The_ Space City? Why didn’t you say so —”

“Shut up, Vila,” Jenna said shortly, glancing up at the main screen, where the crawling disc of one of the inner planets was beginning to eclipse the vast blazing heat of Arnya itself. “Blake, just who is this ‘contact’ in the Terra Nostra?”

“He calls himself Largo. Gera Largo.” He saw the recognition he’d hoped for dawning in the former smuggler’s face, and took a chance on pressing her more closely. “Do you know of him?”

“Know _of_ him?” Jenna gave vent to an un-ladylike snort. “I _know_ him. And he’ll know me again, if I have anything to do with it. You could say we met... trading in the Inner Worlds.”

She moistened her upper lip unconsciously, as if in anticipation. “I’ve been waiting a long time for the chance to meet Largo again.”

“Good.” He glanced across. Gan shifted stubbornly, but held his peace. Blake turned to the front of the flight deck. “No objections of principle, I trust, Avon?”

“Hardly. That would be your department.”

“Fine. That’s settled for the moment, then.” Blake swung round, forestalling any protest. “Zen, set up a course for Space City, Satellite _BK-721-32_ , in the Third Sector. Standard by 4.”

“COURSE ENTRY CONFIRMED,” Zen told him. “ESTIMATED FLIGHT TIME FROM ARNYA SYSTEM 400 HOURS. MANUAL CONTROL IS CURRENTLY OPERATIVE.”

Jenna sighed. “All right. Switching to automatics. Take her out, Zen.”

She stretched, stood up, and came over to join Blake at the foot of the computer’s dome. “Well, you’ve got what you wanted.”

“Only until someone else gives Zen fresh instructions.” Avon still hadn’t moved.

“Oh, you won’t do that.” A smile had touched Blake’s voice, and Avon’s shoulders stiffened.

“How do you know?”

“Because if I— if we pull this off, that will be it. The end. No more ‘crusade’.” Blake grinned. “Think about it.”

He could practically see the implications whirring behind Avon’s mask. Freedom for Earth would carry no weight there — but freedom from _Blake_....

“‘The end’? You know, a man could take that two ways,” Vila pointed out suspiciously.

“Oh, some ends are more permanent than others.” Avon smiled. “For example, I happened to find out this morning that Cally’s lucky shot at our good friend Travis wasn’t quite as final as we’d all assumed. They managed to get him back to the Central Hospital on Insecution, and he’s there now. Not exactly in high favour with Space Command, I might add, but — for the moment — alive.”

“How’d you find _that_ out?” Blake said, surprised, only to regret it as Avon’s smile curled.

“Orac.” The word was a challenge, and one Blake had no intention of taking up.

In his heart of hearts he had to confess that he was indeed less than happy about the amount of time Avon was spending alone with their newest and most powerful acquisition, still less with the somewhat possessive attitude he’d begun to take. But expecting him to keep away from it would have been as foolish as expecting Jenna to give up the _Liberator_ — computers were Avon’s field and his speciality. Besides, as Gan had once said in private with a slow grin, given Orac’s personality he reckoned they deserved each other.

“Have you told Cally?” he said mildly instead, and had the satisfaction of seeing Avon taken momentarily off-balance.

“More to the point, has anyone told Cally about the Terra Nostra?” Gan broke in, still obviously far from happy about the scheme and looking for support.

Blake was already halfway to the exit. He turned, one foot on the first step. “Oh, Cally knows.”

It was almost worth it just to see the unanimous expressions, for once, on the faces below him.

* * *

Stillness.

Moaning, somewhere far away, and then again from some fresh quarter, like distant sirens in counterpoint.

The rattle of the trolley that signified dawn.

Voices, obscenely cheerful, then hushed as they passed the doorway. The murmur of conversation from a lobby in some entrance-hall, ebbing and flowing as heavy doors slid momentarily open. Once, a distant child’s wail of protest, and a scolding woman.

The drowse of noon, with the faint clatter of plates.

An emergency buzzer, muted but urgent, setting his heart pounding in useless reflex; while the corridor filled with the rush of feet from the canteen, summoned to save life, somewhere, as it hung in the balance.

The steady clang that marked afternoon shift-change across the city. A transport passing somewhere outside the walls, its heavy whine oddly staccato in the distance.

Visiting hour, in another wing. Quarrels, recriminations, tears, in snatches as raised voices drifted.

Dusk, and the subsound of the generators rising slowly, imperceptibly, as they took up the extra strain.

Moaning. Fretful cries, dying away one by one.

Stillness.

Hospital-bound, his day was mapped out in soundscapes and guesswork, with only the faint constant wheeze of the oxygenator by his side to give him reference. The blindness was not the worst. Nor the pain, drugged as he was almost into oblivion. It was the suffocation of immobilised lungs; constant underlying panic in the hindbrain telling him his chest should heave, sucking air into ruined tissues, that he must breathe or die.

Machinery could send a constant solution of oxygen into his blood, feed him with nutrients and filter out the wastes. It could not conquer the animal instinct of the mind.

They kept him tranquillised, when he was lucid enough to think. Left him quiet and unresisting in a softened, rose-coloured haze, with the hours of the hospital flickering past in a kaleidoscope of sound that was somehow more absorbing than the demons that battered from the recesses of his past. It was the greatest mercy Travis had known in a long time.

Even the Federation Supreme Commander could not penetrate unheralded into the sanctum of the Central Hospital. Her arrival announced itself, sharpening, through Travis’ shielding daze as a gradually swelling chorus of protest, beginning far away and gathering strength with every department through which she swept. An unmistakable voice cut through red tape at every turn. Lying trapped and helpless in his bed, Travis pulled together what faculties remained to him, steeling himself for what was to come. He had failed, and failed one time too many. Servalan did not forgive.

“Yes, Doctor, I have had the full reports. I am well aware that the patient is unable to speak.” She must have paused in the doorway itself, for in the next moment the hubbub from outside was cut off as if a privacy screen had come down, and Travis could hear the leisured tap of her heels approaching the bed.

A soft creak and whisper of cloth, as if she had sat down. Her scent hung in the air, a sharp artificial musk. Every sense straining, Travis found himself trying to pinpoint her position; but her next words, borne on a waft of perfume, were suddenly, shockingly close.

“The accord was signed last evening, Travis. Despite the conspicuous failure of your expedition.” Her breath brushed his cheek, and he could hear the tiny sound as she inhaled. One talon-tipped finger traced new-healed flesh in a line of agony so finely judged that it might almost have passed for a mistaken caress.

“And they tell me these seizures of yours have gone untreated for months. A little longer, and you might have suffered permanent damage to that remaining optic nerve. Blind for all time, Travis.” The sweetness of her voice could have entrapped galaxies. “Now, that’s no part of a Federation officer’s duty. We need to find that flaw, my dear, find it and correct it, just as we correct this botched surgery on your face.”

A feather-light touch to awaken the churning pit of lava that was the pain beneath his missing eye. His lips moved, but without air he could not make a sound. The smile in Servalan’s voice widened.

“Oh, not here, of course. The Federation retraining centre will have all the supplies and technicians we need... to reconstruct a useful commander from the shell of this battered —” _Tap_ , went her nails. Travis’ muscles jumped. “— worn-out —” _Tap_. “— hulk.” The wheeze of the oxygenator at the bedside had begun to escalate into a labouring hiss.

Another creak, as she evidently sat back. “They tell me you’ll have your voice back in a week or so, once the immobiliser is removed. I’m afraid my own delegation will long since have left by the time of that event. Circumstances have arisen that urgently require the Supreme Commander’s presence — I’m sure you understand. And I’m sure Central Security will be prepared to wait until you are in a condition to give full co-operation to their enquiry....”

Enquiry? Travis could taste the betrayal in it, like carrion blowing on the wind.

“I imagine they will be particularly interested in the presence of Blake. For it seems he was present among the rebels after all, was he not? Of course, the survivors’ report could not help but stress that the identification was made by you alone....”

Obsession. Travis could just imagine the tone of the account she would submit, condescending in its allowances, damning in its calculated leniency. Obsession. Delusion. Insubordination.

“Your arrival, Space Commander. Your expedition. Your decision. I’m sure the spectre of Blake will be sufficient to explain this little fiasco to Central Security on your behalf. Or perhaps not.”

The briefest caress, like the fleeting prick of teeth at his throat. “Total retraining erases all outstanding disciplinary procedures, naturally. And my statement will ensure you the highest degree of support.”

Trapped, raging, inside his own frozen and silent body, Travis could see it all very clearly. The Supreme Commander. The whitewash. The scapegoat. The so-tender mercies of the therapists solicitously expunging this new black mark. Better to have died a thousand times; better to have died at the Auron’s hand than be a pawn in Servalan’s grasp. He would have died happy in that mountain cave if the conscripts had done as he had ordered, with Blake’s scream the last sound in his ears.

And still the purring pleasant voice ran on like honeyed vitriol at his side, lapping him in the snares of her concern. Servalan won. Servalan always won, was famous for it in Space Command, shifting position with the deceptive colour-change ease of the Eralthi. Servalan always came out on top, a little higher from every disaster than she went in — Supreme Commander already, with her ambitions set higher still. And the careers of those who took the blame lay stretched out behind, like so many corpses as waymarks on the route to power.

“I contacted Samor of the Eighth Fleet on your behalf,” Servalan was assuring him. “I made the strongest representations that your flotilla comprised an independent command constituted for the sole purpose of hunting down Blake, and convinced him to reassign sufficient vessels to release the pursuit ships for their original duty. They have orders to proceed at once.”

She brushed her touch across his brow again, where the damaged nerves pulsed wetly beneath the skull. “Of course, under the circumstances I had to assign another officer to fill your place. Having made such a point of the need for urgency, I could scarcely turn around and insist to Samor that he kick his heels awaiting your return.” A tiny, tinkling laugh. She laid a finger on his cheek almost playfully.

“Space Commander Varek left from headquarters this morning. He has orders to surround Blake and press home an attack with the utmost dispatch. I have no doubt he will prove an excellent choice.”

Travis moved not a muscle. Would not give her that pleasure. He’d wrung hell and high water to get that command. Escape from headquarters, from the scheming, the plans. Field service, as he’d wanted for Lanuv....

Perfume cascaded across him as she rose.

“Oh, and Travis?” The words floated back on a smile, a scrap tossed to a lapdog in parting. “I’m so glad you reconsidered my advice. I gather you managed to dispose of the girl after all. I do hate loose ends.”

The door opened and then closed again for a second time. Travis was left alone in the howling darkness with the echo of her smile.

* * *

“Cally?”

The Rest Room was empty, as was the smaller room where the plaques for the bookscreen were kept. She was not in the medical bay, and if she had shut herself into her cabin then she was not answering. Blake tried again. “Cally?”

But the silence that responded was uncompromising. He was almost certain there was no-one there.

“Cally!”

It was almost twenty minutes later before he found her, far down at the end of a passageway that led to a set of unused cabins. For one moment, as she caught the sound of his footsteps and turned, she was outlined against the starfield beyond, like a portrait in profile within a silver frame.

The viewport, like all those outside the main living areas of the ship, was very small, and set back deep within the fluting of the hull. Blake was not sure that he had ever consciously noticed it before. But there was an all but untouched mug of _casurin_ standing cooling at Cally’s elbow, and the ringed nest of markings on the ledge of ducting at that point told their own tale. The Auron had found this place for herself long ago and must have stood here time and again, leaning against the _Liberator_ ’s warm sides with a cup for company, and gazing out, as she did now unseeing, into the changing stars.

It felt like an intrusion. For a moment he was on the point of backing away. But Cally had already looked up. As Blake hesitated, she beckoned him to join her with a small but genuine smile.

Blake accepted the quiet invitation in a companionable silence of his own, taking up a place on the opposite side of the viewport and leaning back against the wall gratefully. The smooth panels were warm against his cheek, and alive even here with the tiny distant tremor that was the heart-pulse of the ship, from the massive drive chamber far, far away.

Cally had turned back to the stars beyond. Blake followed her example for a moment, watching the giants of the universe turn like points of fire against the velvet night. The ancients, Earth-bound, had dreamed the heavens danced to the music of the spheres. Out here one could almost believe in it; an intricate, arching melody on the verge of human senses, playing out beyond the edge of comprehension until the end of the worlds.

What tales had Cally’s people told of the stars, back in the days before human flight? He knew so little of Auron, he had realised in those long days of searching, so terribly little, as he had tried to guess how she had thought, how she felt.

Humans had simply called them ‘alien’, as if that were an answer in itself. But it told nothing at all of what it was _like_ , to speak from mind to mind; of what legends and what friendships and what customs were born, among those who were not-us. So very, very like, and yet on the most essential level — not us. He had felt Cally’s pulse once, the rippling Auron beat that fed telepathy organs no human body could ever support.

Alien blood, under the skin. She was a telepath, a mind-speaker. But she was more. She was Auronar, with a planet and a people all her own in which humans had no part. She was more different than any of them could conceive, with impulses and demands none of them could ever meet. Instinct had compelled her to the aid of Amery, a driving need at which he could only guess. And yet the needs that had bound them together beyond that were more complex and more painful than any human had a right to dismiss.

Her eyes were shadowed as she gazed outwards, with a tiny sparkle of light reflected back from the sky as if a star had taken refuge beyond their depths. But she was healed, he believed, healed in body and perhaps in mind — at least as far as the _Liberator_ could aid her; there was no torment in her gaze now, watching the endless void. Only a quiet sadness.

The cropped jacket and trousers she had chosen today to wear betrayed how slender she still was; but she had always been deceptively slight. It was no clue to the braced strength that lay beyond. He had made that mistake in their first meeting — Blake grinned a little ruefully, remembering a too-intimate acquaintance with the red scree of Saurian Major — he knew better than to make it now.

Cally turned slightly and looked across, catching him watching her as their eyes met. For a moment Blake felt himself again an intruder; but Cally did not seem to sense the slight awkwardness. She listened, calm and withdrawn, as he gave her the news about Travis, and absorbed it almost without reaction. Whatever passion of vengeance had driven her, white-faced and blazing, as she made that shot had long since ebbed back into the ashes of regret.

For a moment he thought she was about to ask after the Space City scheme; but her next words betrayed how little she was thinking of that proposed expedient alliance.

“The Federation eats its own, Blake. It takes them — and uses them —” She broke off, gazing once more out at the stars. But he did not believe now that she was seeing them at all.

“Amery?” Blake prompted softly, and Cally whirled.

“And Amery, yes! He was not the fool you think him — he knew the Federation was flawed — but he sought them out across the worlds in the hope of a greater union, to offer all Auron had to give so that we could lead the way....” She took a deep breath, an echo of that old unguarded pain back in her face.

“He was sweet-natured and gentle, loyal and l-” her voice shaking a little, she broke off the cadence — “and, and fiercely honest. And his death was _pointless_....”

“Most death is pointless.” His brother. His sister. Blake could not keep his own bitterness from showing. “And at least you still carry his ghost within you. I almost wish —”

“No. Never wish for that.” The vehemence in the telepath’s words shook him. There was a moment’s silence.

Cally took up her cup, found it lukewarm, and set it down again. “No,” she said more gently. “No ghosts, Blake. He is gone.”

“I’m sorry.” Cally said nothing and Blake watched, helpless.

“We’re not fighting the Federation because the individuals within it are evil,” he said at last, reaching out to touch her hand with his own. “We never were. We’re fighting for their sake — for all those caught up in the machine, for those who believed and those like the rest of us who had no choice.”

“No choice....” Cally’s fingers tightened in his grip. “A Federation officer gave her life for mine — disobeyed an order because she was my friend. How do you judge that?”

“You don’t.” Blake met her eyes, giving her the only answer he had. “You take the gift... and carry on.”

The stars were very bright outside, with the hard-edged brilliance of a spacefarer’s dreams. Things were simpler, starker in space, without the deceptive diamond flicker that sprang from the very air of the world they breathed; the ideals that had lent that first precious lustre to their goal, far-off and seemingly unattainable as the jewelled sparkle of the night sky. Everything seemed closer in the emptiness between the stars. Easier to touch. Devalued of its glimmer even as one reached for it. It would be so easy to forget Earthbound dreams in the scrabble for existence, out here. To succumb to the ruthless logic of the world as it seemed by that unforgiving light, and not as it should be. To mistake the means for the end....

You could not lose sight of that end, not ever. Dared not, for the sake of your own integrity. Your own belief.

“Carry on,” Cally said softly into the silence. “Carry on... to the Terra Nostra? At a price —”

“At a cost. To the end.” Blake no longer doubted the answer. “For all those who have paid — to the end. Until we too at last shall be free.”

“From that choice at least.” It was a tiny, rueful smile, but it was there.

Blake smiled in return, taking up the hand he still held to lead her back towards the others. “Come on. No, I’ll take that — let me —”

He took the untasted cup of _casurin_ firmly from her, grimacing as it spilled over onto his hand, and had to release his grasp to dab clumsily at the mess. But Cally was laughing.

“No, _you_ come on, Blake. How will the galaxy manage even these few minutes without you —?”

The warmth was back in her face, and Blake acknowledged the little shaft in the same spirit in which it was meant, grinning. Maybe the _Liberator_ ’s crew were not fellow-telepaths; but there was a fellowship there for all that.

I don’t know if that can be enough, Cally. I don’t know if a handful of humans can ever take the place of the children of Auron. I can’t even guess at how lonely it must be. But you belong here, with us, brave warrior for peace, and we’ll try. We’ll try.

He followed her back down the passageway towards the rest of the ship, a tall man moving with the unconscious assurance of a king. And Cally of Auron led the way.


End file.
